Well, another assignment that on first reading causes the mind to go blank: I wasn’t born, had no parents. Somehow I don’t think my mother would find that funny. After all, the story of my birth is really my parents’ story.

My father was a Lieutenant in the United States Navy, stationed in San Diego, CA when they learned Mom was pregnant. Dad reenlisted for six months to ensure their first child would be born in a navy hospital. WWII was over, but most military personnel had not yet returned to their civilian jobs so Mom and Dad weren’t sure of the quality of care in a civilian hospital. Dad was then assigned to Great Lakes Naval Training Base in Illinois.

My parent’s lived in an apartment in Zion, IL, a town started by a religious group, which is near the base. They enjoyed their life at this post and made friends. At a party they played with a Ouija board. It said I’d be a boy and my name would be Roy. So I was called “Roy” until I arrived. Then they discovered that I’m a girl and they named me Nancy. What do those Ouija boards know?

The due date for my arrival was Mom’s birthday so they didn’t plan much of a birthday celebration. But when I didn’t show up they celebrated and she ate ice cream and cake.

I was one week late. And I cost my parents $17.50. My parents, as all parents, thought I was adorable. Mom told me several times that after seeing the horrors of war, Dad saw my arrival as a message that there really is good in the world.

I was born at 10pm. The doctor who delivered me attended a party that evening, but he didn’t drink any alcohol because he knew I was coming and he didn’t want to be impaired. Mom thought this “awfully nice” of him, and I think confirmed they had made the right decision to stay in the Navy.

But, an officer is a gentleman and a gentleman doesn’t hold babies. Dad could have been demoted if he had been seen holding me. My father loved babies. The glow I saw on his face every time he held one is unequaled. It must have hurt him to not be able to hold his first child as he showed her off.

My father’s parents lived in New Jersey. They visited one of Dad’s brothers who lived in Chicago, not far from the base. Mom and Dad traveled there to show off their new baby. I was my parents’ first, but my paternal grandparents’ sixth grandchild. Mom’s face was pained when she told me she could still see the tears streaming down my father’s face as he held his baby out in his arms begging his father to look at his new granddaughter. Grandfather said he had seen babies before and there was nothing special about this one; he refused to look at me and walked away. Others of my father’s family were more welcoming.

My mother’s parents in Oklahoma were ecstatic. Their first grandchild, a boy, had arrived just a month and a half earlier.

Our time at Great Lakes and Zion was short. Mom and I then lived with her parents for a few months while Dad set up a home for us in Iowa and began his civilian life with a new job.

A few years ago Mom gave me a pink stationery box tied with a pink ribbon. It is filled with antique cards. Stop! Did I say antique? I’m not THAT old, just because the cards look it! Mom saved all the gift enclosure cards from the baby gifts, and the congratulatory cards and letters about my birth. Some of the letters are from relatives. Unfortunately, time has not improved the handwriting and I can’t read most of them. Most of the cards have names I don’t recognize. I never lived in close proximity to these people so they never became part of my life. These were my parent’s friends. These were people proud and happy for my mother and father. This pink box is filled with mementos and memories, my parents’ memories. The story of my birth is my parents’ story.

She arrived in San Angelo, Texas, after a long, hot, dusty and crowded journey by train. It was early summer and she was eager to join her husband, an army air corps pilot stationed at Goodfellow Field. After months of following him to several bases, it was good to think about settling down for awhile.

Initially, she had no appetite due to the hot weather. It was weeks before she was able to eat a decent meal and that turned out to be a bowl of chili con carne. This Irish girl from Brooklyn, used to overcooked meats and vegetables, found the chili to be the only thing she could enjoy eating. Shortly after arriving, she landed a secretarial job for an executive of a local company. Jobs were easy to get in a country turned topsy-turvy by war.

They rented rooms in a big white frame house with a huge porch. Housing was in short supply in those days what with all the military arriving and looking for places to live. They considered themselves lucky to be with a hospitable family, even though they had to sacrifice some privacy by living and sharing common areas with strangers.

A few months later, she found herself pregnant for the first time. The nausea caused by the heat was replaced with another kind of nausea which lasted a few months. But the joy of the expected child overcame any temporary discomfort.

He was ecstatic in his usual way, dancing around the room at the announcement, lifting her up in the air in his strong arms and falling more in love with her than ever, telling everyone he knew about this exciting event about to happen. In fact, he was ecstatic about everything in his life right now.

They had met at a church dance in Brooklyn on the evening of the attack at Pearl Harbor. Shortly after, he enlisted in the army. They were married January 9, 1943. Children of the Depression, and now faced with the reality of World War II, they were always ready to have a good time, to live for the moment. There was not much planning for the future when the present seemed so nebulous. And they danced their way through time, always on beat, to the music of the “Swing Era.”

After basic training, officer candidate school and pilot training, this high school dropout had finally earned his wings and was a full fledged pilot. He was assigned to Goodfellow Field which was an advanced air training base where San Angelo Air Corps Basic Flying School was established in 1940. He spent the duration of the war training men as pilots and carrying out other stateside assignments. Even though he applied many times to be sent overseas, he was valued as a trainer and was never re-assigned.

The child, a healthy baby girl, was born at 4:11 a.m. at Shannon Hospital in San Angelo four days before D-Day. At the time he was 25 years old and she was 24. There was nothing unusual or significant to remember about the birth. It must have been lonely for her to give birth away from her family but there was a community of other army wives in the same circumstances and there was a tight bonding among them.

One can only speculate on their hopes and dreams for their future individually and as a family. What was in store for this tiny family with no home and no wealth and a war that seemed to go on forever? In fact, it would be another year or so before victory was declared, first in Europe on May 8, 1945 and then in Japan on August 15, 1945. No one of their generation was untouched by the war and it changed them forever as they marched forward into the oblivion of the 1950s.

A few minutes past midnight she made her entry into the world. She was placed in a tiny bassinette in the hospital nursery. Her mother was exhausted. Her father would have been happier if she had been a male child. Everything seemed normal. Her birth weight was seven pounds. Her color was pink. Her eyes were blue. What tiny wisps of hair she had was a reddish-pink color. The nurses called her “Pinkie.”
A few hours after her birth a doctor told her mother and father that there seemed to be a problem. The baby was struggling to breathe, possibly from some kind of obstruction. Getting nourishment might be difficult. The next hours and days would tell if the baby would thrive.

The birth of their second baby, Pinkie, was nothing short of traumatic for her parents. Only fourteen months before her birth, the young couple had lost their firstborn, a son, when he was only three days old. He struggled to breathe, also.
With anxious hearts, undying patience, and constant prayers they waited. Pinkie lived three days; then four and five. After swallowing a few drops of milk, she would cough, sputter, and then breathe, in that order. The process was long, but she persevered. On the seventh day Pinkie went home with her mother and father. The anxious grandparents welcomed her with guarded emotions. They were prepared for the worst.

It was 1938. Like Seabiscuit, the popular racehorse, Pinkie never gave up. Newspaper columnists wrote about Seabiscuit more than any other popular figure that year. President Roosevelt was second. Hitler was third.
Every ounce of milk and each time of feeding was faithfully recorded by Pinkie’s parents. She gained several ounces in each of her first months. Several doctors were seen.
Surgery was recommended to correct the problem, but would be too risky before the age of one. Pinkie continued to thrive. She smiled, sat up, crawled and fed herself Pablum from a child’s popular Snow White bowl. At that time Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was Disney’s first feature-length cartoon film that sent his reputation soaring.

Pinkie slept to the popular sounds of swing that came from the large wooden radio that sat in the corner of the living room. Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, and Glen Miller made the sound of the big band popular. Kate Smith sang “God Bless America” for the first time that year. Both the Irving Berlin tune and Kate gained popularity.
When Pinkie was two months old, H.G. Wells broadcast his Halloween scare called “War of the Worlds” and a million listeners panicked. Pinkie didn’t. She slept through the entire program.

Thornton Wilder published Our Town in New York City. Our small town in Iowa was supportive of the young couple, whose miracle baby surprised everyone. A successful surgery gave her a new beginning. But the lessons learned in the first year built a foundation of diehard determination and patient persistence that have lasted a lifetime.

By Carolyn Cummings

My birth was expected and no surprise to my parents. In fact, my mother was really ready for it, she said, and my father had bought a bottle of red wine that he planned to drink at home while waiting for the event at the maternity clinic. They already had a son, a two-year-old Ralf, and now they wanted a girl. They were expecting and ready but they didn’t know who was coming.
As for me, birth was a complete surprise. Sure, it was getting a little cramped in my place but I had gotten bigger and stronger and when I needed to change position, I just pushed and jerked around until I was comfortable again. Sometimes I did it just to hear the dull exclamation outside or, if things were too motionless, I had figured out how a quick kick gets action. I was happy. But things change, as I found out. On that July 18, things changed radically. It started when a little squeeze woke me up. A while later came a bigger squeeze from the walls around me, then harder squeezes and more often until they pushed me down a tube of some sort. You might think a waterslide ride is fun but this was too tight and not fun at all. Suddenly I plunged into a cold, bright and noisy situation. It was diametrically different from the warm wetness of home. The blinding light was horrible. My chest began to do weird things and someone stuck a huge finger in my mouth. I wanted nothing but to go back to where I had been but I didn’t know how. I was grabbed by the ankles, held upside down to stretch out and pummeled until I heard a yell. It was me, I made a loud noise! After that I tuned out.
Next thing I remember was meeting mom. I couldn’t make anything out too clearly but my mouth found what it searched for and I latched right on to it. I didn’t know what I was doing but I had discovered milk. I relaxed into bliss. She had bright blue eyes that gazed at me with a nice look. I was wrapped me in warm blankets and she held me. It was almost like being back home only I couldn’t float around because this was a dry warm. I was doing breathing now, something I couldn’t do in the other place and that was fun. This is how I learned early on that one can’t have everything. Mom had brown curls on the top of her head and a nice laugh. Every time I opened my eyes, she smiled and made sounds at me.
Pretty soon the progenitor arrived. He had a huge smile and a golden glint on the corner of the front tooth. I couldn’t have told you that in so many words then but in my own newborn way, it was the first thing I noticed. He was so happy he wanted to throw me up into the air but they wouldn’t let him. Again I checked out for a while until the next nipple session.
I liked all the attention and new stuff, especially when they moved slowly and the light and sound levels were low. It went on that way: A new face, a wet bottom, a dry cloth, mom’s face, a yummy nipple, etc. The smaller face with big brown eyes gazing at me and poking me turned out to be my brother. They all kept moving, getting larger and smaller and making noises. When I got tired, I closed my eyes and tuned out. That’s how it went. I had a good time. That's about all I remember about my birth which was, after all, six decades ago.

Psychologists and social workers say that who we are and ultimately become is determined by ones position in the family. They say they can predict personality traits of the first born, middle child and the youngest.

In the year of 1936 Hitler received ninety nine percent of the German vote. Trotsky was exiled from Russia and went to live near his friends Frieda Khalo and Diego Rivera in México City where ultimately he was assassinated. London’s tabloids were filed with rumors that King Edward the Eighth would give up the throne for that nasty commoner and Nazi lover Mrs. Wallis Simpson. “Its De Lovely" was the popular song of the year, Charlie Chaplin was staring in “Modern Times” and Bruno Richard Hauptman was convicted of kidnapping and killing the Lindbergh baby.

But for my family the most important event of that year happened on May twenty second at approximately two pm in a hospital in Brooklyn, New York. A tiny pink baby girl with hair so white and eyes a very pale blue, they feared she was an Albino, was pushed out of her mother’s comfortable womb only to be slapped on her behind until she cried. But this child was not very happy and rather than cry she howled. According to legend the only time her parents can remember her being silent occurred in the few moments between her exiting the birth canal and the doctor’s hand on her tush. So on this seasonably warm day in May I made my grand entrance and debut into this world of soon to be turmoil and war.

Children were not allowed in the hospital so my mother wrapped me in a pale pink blanket and held me up to the window which was almost street level. This is how I met my sister Carol who was three years old tall, for her age with long auburn curls.. Carol came to the hospital with my father and I like to think she was happy to meet me. She blew kisses up to the window but there was no great smile of enthusiasm on her face. Probably, without understanding why, she wasn’t too thrilled with the competition.

We lived in a very tight community where most of our parents were first generation American and culturally Jewish whose parents emigrated from Russia and Poland. Everyone knew each others phone number, watched each other children without being asked, joined together to celebrate and gathered together to grieve. They spoke Yiddish when their children weren’t supposed to know what they were talking about. We were a nuclear family with grandparents, aunts, uncles and lots of cousins to play with. Friends and family were our emotional and spiritual support systems. Religion was never mentioned not even in death.

In nineteen forty two when I was six Irving Berlin, an American Jew wrote White Christmas while the murder of millions of our extended families that remained in Europe were being put to death in Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Rumania, Lithuania, and Italy in German death camps. George Cohan died at age sixty four, John Barrymore died at age sixty two and Carol Lombard died in a plane crash when only 33. This was also the year my sister died just one week before her ninth birthday

April seventh was also the day that at less than six years old I was no longer the baby of our family but now became an only child and everything in my home and life and small world began to change. What once was a home filled with laughter, jokes and teasing was replaced with depression, silence and weeping. I was lonely and frightened. Could I disappear like my sister?
Would they also cry for me if I never came home? The concept of death is almost impossible for young children to comprehend. Yet I knew that if I cried adults would become impatient and my friends would call me “crybaby.” Without understanding what I was doing my survival instincts took over and I learned at this very early age to laugh at life, hide my feelings and be funny. I learned how to adapt.

One year later a little boy was born. At first I hated him for getting all the attention I was beginning to get used to but when I saw his fat cheeks, tiny hands, feet, blue black hair and incredible turquoise eyes I fell in love with my baby brother and accepted the role of the older sister. For the second time in less than seven years I learned to adapt once more.

.