Once upon a time there was a young mother-to-be who was in a horrible car accident when she was six months pregnant. The young woman hid her pregnancy as long as she could until that fateful day in the hospital - when the doctor accidentally outed her by talking to the parents and saying that both the "mother and the baby" were fine. The parents - naturally - blanched white and froze, and the doctor frantically started asking the nurses around him if he had the right family. The outcome of the baby's life, however, was uncertain at the time. There was talk of brain damage or crippling disfigurement or just plain old not being born. The mother suffered multiple injuries, including a fractured neck and probably lots of emotional scarring given the entire situation she'd been facing the last six months.
So three months later, baby was born - healthy. Perfect (or so I'm told - I don't like to toot my own horn). No brain damage. No injury. No disfigurement. Just a baby born to a mama - who was still horribly injured and really unable to even hold her newborn very well. So baby and mama went off to live with the mama's parents so they both could be cared for while they healed and grew. Over time, mama realized that she was unable to adequately care for baby (both physically and emotionally at the time), and ultimately it was decided that mama's parents would adopt the baby.
Thus I have summed up the first 2.5 years of my life in two paragraphs. Hi. *waves* I am the baby who was born just healthy and fine. Managed to scrape through for about, oh, 33 years now, and I guess for the most part I'm pretty normal-ish. I wanted to share this story because when I started to talk about life (which also includes Disney and Star Wars), you'll hear me use certain terms. So I wanted to lay this out as a glossary. No! A Dramatis Personae - because that makes it sound like my life is an epic drama (which it isn't). But don't we all want to be epic dramateers? Or...something like that.
Okay, so here we go:
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
Shada = Me
Mom = maternal grandmother, adopted mom
Dad = maternal grandfather, adopted dad
Mommy = biological mother
It's really a pretty simple list when I look at it. Not confusing. But sometimes it helps to have it in writing. But the true purpose of this post was to start out explaining where my love of Disney (and Disney World) originated.
Being adopted by my grandparents came with the advantage that they were older and more "set" in their lives when I came along. My Dad was a truck driver with a successful company, making good money. My Mom stayed at home and watched over me. However - like life does - a wrench was thrown into the works, and my Dad suffered a severe back injury due to his work. When I was just about 3ish, he had to undergo severe back surgery and quit his job on the road. My Mom took up the torch and went to work during this time, and Dad took his turn in watching over me.
These are all very early memories, so things can get pretty fuzzy. My folks remember the details, but I remember things like rolling down the hill outside of Dad's hospital room. Or trying to figure out how to tie a bike to my Mom's car so I could follow her to work. Or playing "cowboys" and listening to my Dad tell me stories on his knee. So my timing on things is off when I tell stories from this era because - honestly - it's a jumble of memories.
But somewhere in all of this, Dad eventually healed up enough to start working again, and he took on a role at his brother's landscaping business. Mom was able to quit her full time job, and things went back to normal. Ish. Because my life is always normal-ish.
The landscaping business mostly dealt with sod (growing grass, cutting big hunks of grass, laying those hunks of grass down elsewhere, watching grass grow). In the midwest, however, grass does not grow in the winter. Instead, we grow snow ("it comes up out of the ground, like grass, and the wind blows it around so it looks like it's falling"). So my parents had this bright idea.
Go where it's warm. Because it's freaking cold up north.
Thus started my yearly trips to Florida. And since this post is getting long, I'll end it there and pick up with more fun things later on down the line...which just means we're gonna talk Disney. ;)
No comments:
Post a Comment