Growing up PK, I performed in dozens of holiday programs but this was my first in a parental role. I wasn’t embarrassed when CD abandoned the stage – who could expect more of a three-year-old? I hoped he’d enjoy the performance but I don’t think he did. A live audience flicks a switch in some kids – not CD, at least at age three.
I was a show-off at his age, desperate to drown out my younger sister Janet. After I belted all four verses of “Oh Come all Ye Faithful”, my father would gently suggest I let Janet take her turn. “No, Daddy, she’s too little, she doesn’t know the words, I’ll sing it! Joy to the World, the Lord is come…” All of this was recorded for posterity on reel-to-reel tape.
I’m not sure when I lost my taste for performing – probably when we moved to California and I was the uncomfortable new kid in kindergarten. My concern shifted from wanting to share my genius with the world to obsessing about how the world rated me (as yet unaware that most people weren’t paying that much attention.) My fear of not being good enough silenced the raging diva deep inside.
I have no photos from the party, alas, so I’m using photos of the people mentioned in the blog taken (I think) in 1986. From l to r, John, Janet, myself, Joyce Salter
I love Art Everett’s observation about how some humans maintain their cock-eyed optimism in the face of certain disappointment. There are plenty of people at the other end of the spectrum – perpetual pessimists – but I’m lucky enough to be surrounded by optimists. I flirted with cynical despair myself in my senior year of high school when I struggled with clinical depression but it’s not my natural inclination. (Senior Year Depression ) If it was, I’d work hard to change as empirical evidence suggests that most people’s happiness meter is set. Basically, we’re about as happy as we expect to be. A sudden windfall or financial disaster might make you go TILT for a moment but your internal happiness meter will reset at its normal level before long. Given this, why not put in a little effort to set that meter as high as possible?
Host and hostess extraordinaire Art and Karen Everett (at our messy Lowell Ave house, not their sleek chic Thousand Oaks pad). The party referenced in diary took place somewhere else entirely – no photos as far as I know. .
What can I say about that mortifying pratfall? Admittedly thin-skinned and over-sensitive about looking stupid, it bothers me more than it should when people laugh at me. Consequently, I rarely tell stories in which I’m a complete buffoon. This pratfall was hard to forget. Years later, whenever I ran into Tony, Laraine or Debbie, we’d laugh about the day I totaled their plant with my fat pregnant butt. On the bright side, I never backed up without an eye to the rear-view mirror again.
Terry McDonnell and John Salter at a mystery party around the same time
I am so embarrassed!
[1] As you may have surmised, when attending a reject gift party each couple brings a newly-wrapped hideous present someone else once gave to them. Hilarity ensues as guests swap one atrocious gift for another. It’s a really fun party and I highly recommend it.
By “one big pregnant blur” I meant seven more months. Little did I know it would be fourteen more months. What the hell happened?
A month prior, I took a pregnancy test at Verdugo Hills Hospital as opposed to a do-it-yourself pee stick. Why? Because I didn’t trust my ability to read the results accurately. I wanted professional eyes.
After the positive test, I packed on pounds like a sumo wrestler.
I quit nursing Sam to ensure adequate nourishment for the new baby.
Sam contemplates munching on her rag doll some more.
Let’s back up. Three children weren’t part of John’s or my master plan. We were satisfied (and exhausted) by our current two, a boy and a girl. We convinced ourselves this third child was meant to be.
Delighted CD meets his little sister Sam – two children, a boy and a girl. Perfect.
Our childless friends mocked us mercilessly. “What did you do, mount her on the way out of the delivery room?” they taunted John. Truth be told, back-to-back pregnancies struck me as a tad trailer-trashy and unseemly but I waddled on.
John, CD and Uncle John Salter
In March, at my monthly appointment, my OB couldn’t find a fetal heartbeat. (This was the first time she tried.) Alarmed, she ordered an ultrasound and – surprise!
Despite looking ready to drop, I wasn’t deep in my fourth month – not even close. I was two weeks pregnant. In other words, months ago – when I fretted about how 1984 would be one big pregnant blur – I wasn’t even a little bit pregnant. Instead of giving birth in July, as everyone I knew now expected, I’d deliver in October.
Sam with Aunt Joyce Salter
How could such a mix-up happen? The hospital stood by their initial positive pregnancy test, suggesting I subsequently miscarried (without noticing it) and promptly conceived again. I thought it far more likely they screwed up the test and – under the delusion I was already pregnant – I quit nursing after which I conceived for real.
My father stands behind my sister Janet
Ultimately, it didn’t matter. By now, John and I were fully adjusted to the prospect of three children. The fact he or she would be a Libra rather than a Gemini was no reason to reconsider.
I have another more fantastical theory about what happened. It has no scientific basis in fact. In my myth, Alex and Sam knew each other in previous incarnations, different lifetimes. Maybe they were lovers, maybe one parented the other, maybe one saved the other’s life. Regardless of what bound them, their connection ran deep. In this lifetime, Alex wanted to be close to Sam – this time, to watch her grow up. The strength of his love and the sheer force of his will powered him through time and space and created that magical mishap with my pregnancy test all to bring them together again – this time as siblings.
Sam and Alex reunited in this lifetime as siblings.
Watching them grow up together might make you a believer too. I never want to spend two years pregnant again, thank you very much. But if I was required to be pregnant for ten years to bring Alex into the world, I’d do it. No regrets. It was meant to be.
