My Baby Self Portrait

Normal doesn’t have the same meaning for each of us.  What is normal to one of us may be abnormal to another.  I grew up in a house with older brothers and sisters, while my parents lived in another house seven miles away.  For me that was normal.  My baby brother lived with them until he was about 5 years old.  When according to his words, “They brought me over and dumped me out with all you strangers”.  As an adult someone said to me, “That’s awful!”  I said, “If I had thirteen kids I’d move out of the house too.”

Life can be happy or it can be sad.  It all depends on how we each look at happenings in our life.  My father who wanted many sons was most happy when my mother presented him with baby #1 a boy  John,  then #2 a boy  Carl, but babies #3, #4, and #5 were all girls .  There was baby #3 Edith, baby #4 Mabel, and baby #5 Geneva.

Now it’s baby #6  Burl and baby #7  Bee and again babies #8, #9, and #10 were all girls .  Baby #8 Edna, baby #9 Hazel, and baby #10 Fannie.

So now he had two boys and three girls and then two boys and three girls.  OK!  Time now for two more boys and, oh happy day, baby #11 a boy  Ernest and baby #12 a bo………………………………Oh! No!     It is not a boy!    It is a girl!     Me!!!

As an adult I made up a joke.  When I was born my dad took one look at me and said to my mother, “Send it back! The plumbing is wrong!”

However, you see, baby #13 corrected everything and was a boy  Howard.  When he was born we still lived in the big white house on the southeast corner of the little cross roads town of Byhalia, Ohio.

I was 3 years and 3 months old and can still remember the big family celebration held in that house for the birth of baby #13, a boy.  Everyone completely ignored me through this “everybody happy party!”  I can remember at age 3 years and 3 months curling up like a kitten beneath a dining room chair and crying.  My nose had been cut off!   You see, my mother had not sent me back when I was born.  In fact I believe she may have spoiled me a little.

I have forgotten the author of this little phrase, “If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” So you see, since I believe it is all up to me, I prefer to live happy  as I make my way through this life.