Toddlerhood is a trial...

I was born a poor, Black child... Okay, forgive me, please! My pun-ny sense of humor just couldn't resist stealing that line from Steve Martin, cheesy as it is! The truth is that I was born a lower-middle class, White kid in a small town in Wyoming.

One of my first memories is of standing in my crib. I believe I was about 18 months old and I was supposed to be napping.My mother lay resting on the couch in the living room. She seemed to need to rest a lot back then. What I didn't know then and wouldn't learn until I was nearly an adult, was that Mom was already struggling with the Leukemia that would threaten and nearly take her life in those young years. I could see Mom through the doorway of my bedroom, her face turned into the fabric, her sides evenly rising and lowering. I remember trying very hard not to wake her as I struggled to free myself from the confines of my wooden-slatted toddler prison. Even at that age I knew better than to raise my mother's Irish temper.

Mom had apparently removed a couple of curlers from her hair and left them on the top of the dresser beside my crib. They were the old-fashioned type of curlers that so many women in the 1960's ran around with in their hair, often all day long. I remember being fascinated by this bristly, twisted-wire and plastic contraption.

Wanting desperately to reach this possible toy, I managed to lift myself onto the edge of the crib side, one leg hanging halfway over. Grunting quietly, I grasped the edge of the dresser and pulled myself forward, reaching out with one chubby toddler hand for the 'forbidden fruit'. (I am nothing if not determined. Remember that, it'll be a main element in a lot of things that happen in my future.)

Just as my fingers brushed against the stiff plastic bristles, a breeze blew in the open window behind the dresser. The two curlers began to roll. Startled, I jerked my hand away from this newly-terrifying 'creature' which had suddenly come to life. I quickly dropped back down into my crib.

Heart pounding, I lay down, closed my eyes and willed myself to sleep. Even at that young age, I remember thinking that if I just went to sleep the resulting nothingness of unconsciousness would make the scary 'living' curlers, that I had apparently brought to life with my naughtiness, disappear. If only the results of all our life's trespasses and 'monsters' were so easy to banish!