A Head of Cabbage

"Of course you're pregnant. No, it's too late to get an abortion. The baby is the size of a head of cabbage. But if you have this baby, it will ruin your life."  That's the advice $5 bought from the gynecologist my biological mother Virginia went to see in the basement of a flower shop.  She was sixteen years old and five months pregnant out of wedlock.  In 1966, that was a big no-no.  Not long after that she went to the "House of Mercy," a home for unwed mothers located near the Washington National Zoo.

Such homes are designed to isolate women, and this one apparently accomplished its purpose.  Aside from occasional visits to the nearby zoo, she didn't see many people outside the home.  My biological father Jimmy came by once, twice if the return to retrieve his wallet counts.  The song "They're Coming to Take you Away" was popular that summer and she couldn't help but relate to the lines, which sound as if they're coming from someone being committed to an asylum.

Despite the less than idyllic circumstances, she entered her 10th month of pregnancy still waiting for me to be born.  She wasn't really ready to give me up, either physically or emotionally.  Nevertheless, labor was induced at George Washington hospital where I was born on July 16,1966.  For the first five days of my life, I stayed with my biological mother as most children do.  Two weeks later, she held and fed me again when it was time to sign the adoption papers.  I was adopted by a family who said they would be Christian parents.  Kenneth and Berit Stetten were many things, but so far as I could tell "Christian" wasn't among them.

That isn't to say I was raised by bad people, I just don't ever recall church being part of my childhood in any sense.  Ken Stetten was raised Jewish and apparently became a member of a Unitarian church so he could adopt me.  Berit was from Finland and if she had any faith in God, she was very private about it.  When they first adopted me, we all apparently lived for a short time in Arlington, VA.  But before I had my second birthday, they had divorced and I moved with Berit to Fairfax, VA.  My first memories come from a townhouse just off Gallows Road near Fairfax Hospital.  The memories are broken and disjointed -- more images than anything else.  I remember some things, but not really in any particular order.

I generally tend to blame my lack of cohesion on either trauma or marijuana use, but the truth is I really don't know why I remember so little of my early years.  When I consider recollections of my childhood with what my own kids remember, it is truly paltry by comparison.  Nevertheless, here are a few things I remember . . .

I had my own bedroom upstairs with windows facing the front of the townhouse.  There was a large tree outside my window whose branches brushed the glass when the wind blew hard enough.  I went to a daycare when I was little, and to Congressional Summer Camp.  I skipped the first grade in private school because of my reading level.  My mother drove a volkswagen, and didn't drive much.  Her diabetes affected her eyesight.  I remember Christmas was a BIG deal.  I still recall Finnish Christmas music, pomanders and cookies -- gingerbread men and some meringue based cookie I wish I could find the recipe to.  It was there I learned how to ride a bike for the first time.

What left the most lasting scar on me (literally) from those very early years was a rock fight I got into with some kid named Alex.  He was about my age, and we had an on-again, off-again relationship.  Once we started throwing rocks and each other and we hit one another at about the same time with a rock in the head.  I still have a scar on my forehead.

Aside from that, I really don't remember much else.  I probably shouldn't write about the time I ate a nickel and then noticed it came out later.  People don't care about stuff like that.

We lived in Fairfax until I was six years old.  At some point in that year we moved to Reston, VA on the Hunter's Woods side of what was then more of a town.  We moved into Colts Neck Apartments, where I would be for the years I can only describe as the years of my corruption.