Unlucky 13

2007…the year my daughter graduated from High School…the first time I felt true pride and joy; but also experienced the loneliness of an empty nest.

1997…the year that changed everything…the first time I felt genuine anguish and pain.

1987…the year my step-father died….the first time I felt the sting of suicide and substance abuse.

1977…the year my grandfather died…the first time I experienced death and questioned my existence.

1967…fortunately, I wasn’t born yet.

Lucky 7? I think not. Unlucky 13? Absolutely!!

I was born January 11, 1969 at 9:53 p.m. My mother was 22 years-old and an unwed, single mother by “choice.” My father, as my mother tells it, I have no firsthand knowledge at all, claims she told him that if he couldn’t be a full-time father, than he shouldn’t be my father at all. She didn’t want me waiting on the doorstep for him to show up for weekly visits and then to see the disappointment in my eyes when he didn’t show. Apparently, he knew he wouldn’t live up to his part of the bargain. So he chose to walk away forever. We’ve never had any contact, ever, and I’m not sure he even knows he had a daughter. He’s never known the daughter who would grow up to be someone who was amazing. And, I’m not being conceited, boastful or proud, but given everything in my life, I am amazing. I have an amazing ability to think, to reason, to write, to love, to imagine, to cope and most important…to survive. But, maybe if he hadn’t walked out on my, I wouldn’t be these things? So, maybe if he stuck around, he wouldn’t have missed a thing?

It might seem like a noble choice to protect her child on my mother’s part, but considering that she drank through her entire pregnancy and often loves to tell the story about how drunk she was on NYE, just 12 days before my birth, I don’t think so! Plus, who knows if that is even the real story.

But, whatever the case, as a consequence, I became a Somerville true and true.

My grandparents, Ruth and Ray Somerville, took me in and raised me as their own. Knowing that their unwed daughter (a taboo in 1969) couldn’t adequately care for me of her own. And, their children (JoAnne, Jerry, Karen, Patty, Jack, Ray, Tim, Marian, Ruthie, Annie, Peggy, Marty) embraced me as their “sister” and I became the 14^th Somerville.

Most of the older kids were grown and out of the house. But, I thank Ray for my love of football. A senior in high school, he was one of the stars of the NDCL football team and my mom attended every game when she was pregnant with me. Marian & Ruthie, also both in high school, greeted me each day as a child they were here to babysit. They made sure I was fed, had fresh diapers and clean clothes. Annie and Peggy, the two youngest girls, as I would learn years later, harbored jealousy toward me for the attention that I received, especially from their father. And, then there was Marty. The youngest, a kindergartener, a mere 6 years older than me. Number 13. Who from the day I was born was my kindred spirit.

When Marty was born, my mother the fourth oldest, was the oldest girl in the house. JoAnne and Karen left the home at a young age to join the convent. Marty and my mother also shared a deep bond and she always treated him special. She was 16 when he was born and like Marian and Ruthie did with me, she made sure he was fed, had fresh diapers and clean clothes. The difference was my mom was a working girl at the time. Instead of high school, she opted to attend “beauty school,” as they called it then, and became a teenage working cosmetologist. With the money she earned, she dotted on Marty and the younger kids, showering them with gifts, buying them clothes, shoes, soda, candy and toys that were luxuries outside of holidays in a family of our size.

Although living at home, mother was able to hide her pregnancy from the family until she was 8 months pregnant. The large smocks she wore for work and her larger size allowed her to conceal her growing belling. She also wore an old school girdle everyday which may explain why I was born with my forehead smashed in. When she finally told the family, she told Marty she was bringing him home a “big surprise.” He thought I was going to be a new football, but instead he got me. I’m sure he was initially disappointed, but little did he know, I would turn out to be one of the best gifts he’d ever been given. And, unlike my father, he choose to unwrap it, embrace it unconditionally love it, play with it, and nurture it until the day he died, October, 27, 1997.

To be continued.