jumbled memories

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I can't wait until the NH primary!!! I got my last graduate degree in New Hampshire so I know that state well. Hell, I know Iowa quite well. I've lived all over. In the Granite State, folks don't truck with bullshit and that's all Hilary has going for her. And in the Granite State, NH, just about everyone has high respect for Vermont.

I couldnt bring myself to live in NH, in a state where all the license plates said 'live free or die' so I opted to live just south of the MA border, equidistance from NH and Vermont. I have good times in my New England years.

I've also had a lot of good times in IA. I grew up in Chicago but I was born in South Dakota, my mom having me there to be near her mother (that was the official story in my childhood, in reality, my mom had hoped my grandparents would take her, newborn me and my older brother Chuck the Fuck who was 18 months old when I was born. When I think of my maternal grandfather, I swear, I always envision him in a dark Druid robe that hides his face and hands, with his left hand silently pointing eastward at the train station after he had plopped my mom and her two babies on the train back to her Catholic marriage. My poor mama. What did a college drop out with two babies do in 1953 if her parents would not help her? She went back to her husband. Eleven months later, my dear, unhappy mom was back in SoDak, giving birth to my Irish Twin Joe, dear little Joe. Once again, the grandparents said it would be a sin to help my mother, now with three babies in her care, leave the sacrament of marriage. Once again, my grandfather appeared at the train station in his hooded druid robes, dooming my mom and all of her children to a whole lot of unnecessary unhappiness. Not that I didn't love my dad. We all loved and liked him more than our mother. His great flaw? He was a compulsive gambler, addicted to betting on harness racing.

When my mom had baby #4 (and she thought she also lost another to a miscarriage and she ended up having 8 full term pregnancies, only six of us 'survived' infancy, my first two sisters died in infancy and oh how tormented I felt, four bruddas, two dead sisters. . . .), mom was far too unwell with baby #4 to travel to Sodak and beg for relief from her parents. It mattered naught to my grandparents that my dad would take his whole paycheck to the track and then leave my mom to figure out how to feed their babies. So mom had #4 in Chicago.

I have never keened in grief more than I did over the death of my first sister, Mary Ann. She lived three months, most of it in an incubatoar. I think the hospital only let her come home a couple days in empathy for me and my, then, three brothers, because in 1960, no children were allowed to visit in hospitals, not even to see their dying siblings.

My mom breast fed Mary Ann, pumping milk all day and my dad, bless him, would come home from work, get the milk and take a bus to the hospital to give it to the baby. I remember begging and begging toi be allowed to go with dad on those milk runs, just to be closer to Mary Ann, for I knew I could not see her. I had a magical sense that my dad might be able to

I sometimes feel that I have lived in more states than just about anyone: born in So Dakota and spent time every summer through college in SoDak, grew up in Chicago, spent time every childhood summer on an aunt and uncle's Indiana farm as a farmed out playmate for my only-child cousin Joy. Joy had an aunt that was a year younger than me, Maggie. Everyone on the farm was expected to help on the farm. Maggie and I were in charge of stacking bales of hay as they fell off the electric loader that lifted them up from the hay wagon into the higher reaches of the barn lofts. It was dusty, scratchy work. We soon learned I am allergic to hay. I was covered in raw, itchy red rashes that often bled but I was expected to go on working. My aunt and my cousin's grandma Rosie who said she was also my grandma urged me to wear long sleeves but I didn't have any. I had packed for hot summer time and no one suggested buying me even one long sleeve tshirt of borrowing one of the male shirts. I pretended I didn't itch. I pretended I didn't feel the endless torment of that allergy to hay. I was so proud to be able to help.

I've also had a lot of good times in IA. I spent time every summer until I married, post law school, in IA, Indiana on a cousin's farm, South Dakota to visit my maternal grandparents (who lived across the ally from George McGovern when my mom was a kid -- I was born in the hometown of George McGovern and was so proud of that when he ran for national office . . . ), college in WI, law school in MN then raised my child mostly in MN but she was born in NE, where I got the hell out as soon as I could, which was not all that soon, for her father wanted to force me to stay near him with our daughter. Sadly, I told him when we separatead that if he gave me custody, I would not ask for anything but the clothes on my back and custody of my baby. He snarled and sneered, reminding my lawyer self that it was against the public interest, meaning few judges would go for my agreement to terminate his parental rights and thereby releease him of child support obligation -- I would have happily waived child support and she and I would have come out ahead economically if he had taken my offer. I spent more on legal fees than he paid, over the next 18 years, on his measly $300/month child support.