It All Started in Chicago

My mother and father both lived in Chicago. My Aunt Binnie was my mothers best friend, and that's how she met my father. My Grandma Annie paid my father, Larry, to ask my mother, Myra, on a date. Originally, he did it for the money. Then he spent an evening with my mother, and returned the money to Grandma Annie when he got home. They were married less than a year later.

That led to my birth in 1961. I am the third and youngest of three sisters. We lived on the south side of Chicago and we were all born at Michael Reese Hosptial.

I was almost six months old when my first near death issue arose. We had a nanny named Gertrude, and she had found me in my crib grey and lethargic. When they rushed me to the hospital, they found out I was dehydrated and near death from a long bout with the flu.

My mother tells the story about how she stayed with me in the hospital for several days as my health teetered back and forth. They had to feed me through my ankle, and I still have the scar to this day. It's on my right ankle and has slightly bothered me all my life. I'm convinced it's all in my head, like some kind of psychic scar.

So....I'm thinking this was my only drama during that chapter of my life. Last year, I'm at my sister Beths house and we're looking at pictures. There is an old photo of us with my mom, her mother Grandma Honey, and my sisters and me sitting by a pool in Florida. I was roughly 2 years old. Beth points at the picture and says "oh yeah, that's the day we found you floating face down in the swimming pool". This I never heard of. I asked my mother about it later, and while she didn't deny it, she said she couldn't remember it either. Beth was 5 years old at the time of the incident, so she remembered it pretty well.