I don’t remember anything about being born.  In fact, the only thing I can remember remotely before the age of three (we’ll get to that age later) is sitting on my butt playing a Thomas-the-Train-Engine toy and I’m not even sure I didn’t make that memory up.  But I know a few things about my origins. 

My Great Great Grandfather and Grandmother (My Dad’s Mom’s Dad’s Parents) are from Sweden and settled in Brooklyn where my Great Grandfather Lawrence E Wollner (the E doesn’t stand for anything) was raised.  He moved to Cincinnati and that’s where my Grandma had Dad.  Dad’s parents weren’t very great but he was smart so when he graduated high school at the age of sixteen he moved to Berea Kentucky were they would pay for him to go to school if he worked in their food court.  He and my Mother met pretty quickly when Mom came for a visit over the summer.  She liked Dad’s friend David first, but when she left for West Virginia Dad wrote her letters.  By the time Mom decided to go back to Berea for school my parents had already decided to be together. 

My older sister was born eight months after my parents were married at the college in a little chapel (Danforth) so my parents were pregnant before they were married without knowing.  Things were rough for my parents and by the time I was born on January 26, 1987 they had lived in a plethora of small places with newborn and even bought some land and a trailer to move onto the land which fell apart as they moved it (they tried to live in the broken trailer until it was robbed; all the while I am growing slowly within Mom).  This was a huge loss for them and began the money troubles that would, in addition to domestic violence, pull my parents apart. 

I was born in the winter.  I like to imagine it was snowing when they brought me out.  I have this image that plays through my mind (who knows, it could be a memory) where Dad is carrying me through the streets of Berea in his arms while he wears a flannel jacket and I look up at him and out to the street and the wind is blowing pretty hard so occasional snowflakes hit me sideways in the fast cold air.  Maybe this is why I don’t care for winter and would rather be swimming in the hot summer sun. 

I grew up quickly and walked talked and basically did everything early.  I had a feel for the physics of the earth and could balance easily and had an older sister to teach me the things I couldn’t learn from just existing.  With this magical combination I was reading and riding bikes by the time I was three.   I never used training wheels.

There are things I hope to be able to say one day, but until I gather courage toward myself, they will stay away, frightened of whatever it is that keeps them there, cowering.  I’m getting better, I’m sure.