The Birth of a Frog

I was having trouble coming up with something to talk about (very rare!) but then I read a post at my favourite blog, Plain Jane. She said that after all your years of living you must have thousands of story’s to tell. She said anybody could come up with something, anything, even the story of your birth and that got me started thinking. I could talk about that.

I was born in August of 1968 in Scarborough of all places. No offense to people from Scarberia because there are lovely areas there but really, I’m stuck with Scarborough on my birth certificate forever. I was the daughter of a teenage mother. She was unmarried, had to drop out of high school when she began to show and eventually became a shampoo girl in a hair salon. Her parents kicked her out when she became pregnant. Lovely. Her boyfriend, my birth father, fled Toronto and abandoned her. Also lovely. It turned out that my birth Father’s parents managed a number of apartment buildings and offered her an apartment until the baby (me) was born. In the social workers notes it mentioned that she was depressed, smoking heavily but otherwise in good health. Well I guess so. If I was abandoned by my parents and boyfriend I might be too.

She gave birth to me on a Wednesday alone at the hospital. I wonder if she ever saw or held me. I was named Linda-Ann and yes it was hyphenated in the Betty-Sue kind of way. I guess then the social workers started to look for a place for me to land. I was Linda-Ann for nine days. I was up for adoption well before I was born. My parents got a call on a Wednesday telling them to come and pick me up on Friday if they were ready. Could you imagine a call like that? I mean they obviously registered to adopt a baby but it is so immediate. At least if you are giving birth you have a ballpark idea. They had no idea when it might happen.

I guess technically I am a bastard, illegitimate. I find that funny. If someone said, “hey you bastard!” I could say,”yeah so what?” Imagine if I had been born a hundred years ago I would be considered an undesirable. I would have trouble making a good marriage. Like this whole birth thing had anything to do with me. I didn’t get to make the choice. Thank goodness we are past that nonsense.

My mother said I was the easiest birth she ever had. No swollen ankles, no recovery, no sore privates. Simply drive to the hospital and bada-bing baby! She said they ran around like crazy on the Thursday getting things ready for me. On the Friday my parents drove to the hospital to meet me. How surreal would that be? Much like my son, all photographic evidence points to the fact I looked a bit like a frog. I was a skinny 6 pound baby with large eyes. In retrospect I hope they weren’t disappointed. Sort of like, “hey we are about to pick up a bonny baby! Ohh well look at this tiny, skinny, froglike child, umm great! Thank you god for our frog child. Hallelujah!”

I still think that it’s a huge leap of faith. Having your own child naturally (you know what I mean) you pretty much know the odds going in. Okay, you have a kooky Aunt Helen, and I’ve got an Uncle with unexplainable warts but let’s take the risk. You and I are fairly average looking people so we might get away with an average looking, fairly bright child, let’s give it a shot. Imagine taking a newborn with no insight as to how they might be. I can’t comprehend my parent’s thoughts. “Well this little frogchild might grow up to be bright and somewhat attractive or she might end up killing us in our beds but let’s just give it a whirl!” Thank god they did.

My parents did not keep pictures of our time as children. Oh no, they kept slides. Urg. The evil Kodak slides which could only be viewed a couple of times a year as a “show”. There is a slide in one of our reels that states, “Stephanie comes home”. It was akin to me being delivered by the stork. I was not born, I was “brought home”. How nice and clean and clinical that sounds. Nine days of being by myself and I was now, brought home. The pictures are delightful in that my parents and brother and sister are all looking very “ooohing and ahhhhing" over me. There is a picture of my brother removing my booty and while he laughs I am crying hysterically. Could you blame me? I mean I’ve been here 9 days and these folk are all trying to play familiar with me. Cut me some slack people.

I wish I had dug out some old pictures to scan. After my frog phase I went into the Winston Churchill phase. In one picture particularly whenever we looked at it my dad would intone, “We shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender!

Winston Churchill phase aside, I was lucky, so very lucky. I came a hair’s breath from not being these people’s daughter. I guess my birthstory wasn’t perfect but that wasn’t what mattered. What mattered is that I came to be part of a family that was perfect for me.