And Along Came Me…
Susan at the age of 4 with cousin Sherry A note to my readers: I am so grateful for this opportunity and your desire to know more about my most fortunate life. I know the form is somewhat strange...no punctuation or caps. Some chapters very long like this one. Jumping around in time. Thank you for your patience and support and friendship. Some of you are so thoroughly woven through these stories and they are especially for you. Please let me know your feedback. Love, Susan i was just born a startled woman awoke to find a little girl in her hospital gown eye to eye at her bedside declaring i was just born i turned to go my gown flapping open over my naked backside out the door and down the hall to my room and bed at st olafs i dont have this memory directly but from the story the nurses told me the next day about my midnight sleep walking ramble through the hospital recovery from ether anesthesia was never easy hallucinations, nausea, vomiting, disorientation sleepwalking… i have one old friend who also experienced ether as a child and had a similar recurrent hallucination while under counting backwards from 10 then black then millions of teeny tiny dots swirling in a ever expanding spiral ala twilight zone tiny tiny tiny tiny to humongous humongous humongous, back and forth over and over again mountain out of a molehill to the extreme hard to even write about it without summoning a single grain of salt ballooning up into a planetary sized salt crystal then back to teeny tiny again ad nauseam literally. i am wondering now if my early experiences with this hallucinogen had long term effects as a child from the age of 3 to 13 i had recurring bladder and kidney infections painful scary for me and for my parents and family as a doctor my dad knew the worst case scenario if the infection spread to my kidneys i could die yes scary susie has a cold it’s raining so no hula hoop contest for you get her to the hospital whenever I got any kind of bug hospital for exploratory with ether stays long enough for me to require a tutor for school painful lonely antibiotics daily for years screws with metabolism made me throw up regular visits to the urologist for pelvic examinations scary painful could kind of screw one up, eh? yet at the same time i was singing every day sang along with mitch on the hifi with my brothers michael john sister jody dad all standing around mom pedaling away on the pump organ sunday school choir in the presbyterian basement singing “for the beauty of the earth” joyce funk our director gave me private lessons next to her at the piano sing from the heart susan sing from the heart several hospital stays campfire songs under the stars at ymca camp olson northern minnesota home of bunyan and babe the blue ox little boy lake emulating our revered camp counselors 500 miles and michael row your boat under the big oak tree on the knoll behind banfield elementary having been given a gorgeous 1956 gibson dreadnaught my hero judy collins hootenanny with my pals show tunes with pal susan ruth we wrote our first song together in 6th grade at the age of 12 Love Haunt Me No Longer Love haunt me no longer, I have felt your sting Take your sweet hope and your false promises And your sorrow and tears And then maybe someday, some how, some way I may learn to love again. 12 years old, what did we know quite a lot another hospital stay or two music music music the transformer violin eventually string bass orchestra 5 days a week hospital life gave me idle time gettin’ crafty bending colorful pipe cleaners into whole zoos of critters and their cages learning origami from a Japanese nurse paper cranes from gum wrappers and napkins that was my last hospitalization as a child it wasn’t til a few decades later when i visited hiroshima and ground zero 50 years after for the first time and came upon the statue and the story of the child sadako surrounded by mounds of colorful folded paper cranes by children from all over the world enfolding their prayers for peace sadako a child in hiroshima city center when ironically named little boy was dropped she survived but suffered the effects of radiation tradition held that if you folded 1000 paper cranes you would be healed sadako died just before she reached 1000 i practiced tracing my father’s beautiful script on the blackboard in the hallway ironic for a doctor to have a beautiful signature i had no idea then that these skills and more would carry me through life to this day a love of paper and ink handcrafting metal wire hints given and habits formed along the way. oh and did I mention tv? dad brought home our first bulky small screened machine ensconced it in our roughly finished basement i was 6 and had only heard about disneys weekly show even though viewed on a tiny screen in grainy black and white it was pure magic next best thing to actually going there a world we had only ever dreamed of in austin minnesota home of spam our storybooks come to life the world seen through that box became a big part of my life my entertainment distraction pain reliever therapist companion big window to the world inside and out although I have spent big chunks of my life without a TV i return again and again to rely upon the interactions between what is projected and my projections for insight about my own life so far it’s been a very effective facilitator of my “personal growth” and at the same time ok a kind of addiction and sedative back at the ranch in the 50s and early 60s we were leaving leave it to beaver land far behind along with the rest of america suppressed grief after wwII and it’s horrible losses were belatedly taking their toll on our family on the american psyche socially obligatory cocktail parties medicating and dulling alcoholism and mental illness were seeping into our bloodlines through the generations wreaking havoc of course like everything else life was not all black and white humor music and love were life boats as we rafted the rapids together as a family. we were a funny bunch with quirky senses of humor a survival tactic born of difficult times we pranked especially the king of pranks my brother john example one day he was sitting at the bar with his friend dale in the rec room basement playing with a weird silvery liquid when I asked what this magical stuff was he sent me on a snipe hunt get a jar and a spoon climb that poplar tree scrape the sliver stuff off the back of the leaves carefully into the jar i spent an hour in the back yard trying to get a leg up before I remembered just who had led me into this folly of course the silvery stuff was mercury the contents of a broken thermometer i loved to walk with my dad searching for interesting stones on the road or on the beach agates fossils rocks that were dull and grey when wetted became jewels we loved the discovery the hunt we loved singing together dad with his shimmering tenor extremely shy he reluctantly shared in public but with me we became nelson eddy and janette mcdonald i am calling you who-who-who across the living room we sang to each other we watched thunder storms and tornados roll in over our little town on sultry summer afternoons while everyone headed to the sw corner of the basement we headed out to the yard thrilled we scanned the darkening sky with binoculars dad annually flooded the backyard at the first sign of a freeze making a rink to skate on mounting flood lights for winter neighborhood fun day and night during the week and when on call weekends dad was stitching up digits treating back injuries listening more than medicating the common infirmities of folks who worked at the plant hormel meats medical department all the while my mother maintained our home cooking and cleaning for 6 refereeing volunteering at the hospital a pink lady delivering magazines books and a listening ear to patients mom and dad were both good listeners as I grew older my friendship grew with my mother as her responsibilities lessened and i matured we shared our love of reading sewing antiques and erma bombeck who wrote broad and sometimes eloquent humor chronicling the life of an ordinary midwestern suburban housewife inspiring my mom to also write what she could about her life at her little desk in the laundry room beneath the stairs and her photo of cary grant while singing his heart out in choir one sunday morning at the age of 36 dad had the first of three major heart attacks alcoholism and and bi-polar disease took their toll and remained undiagnosed for many years untreated both afflictions grow worse with age because we were a doctor’s family in a small town, there were many secrets to keep even now i feel cautious about revealing what we were dealing with as a family back then but I also know now that we were far from being alone in our challenges i had my first period at 13 my mother wept when i told her they thought my illness would have precluded that but for some reason it didn’t much later i could see how my hospital stays were a refuge an escape from the sometimes subtle sometimes not chaos at home even though mostly alone in the hospital i received all the attention and love i craved we were fortunate that my parents knew enough to get help couples therapy 12 step work lithium a miracle when discovered for manic depression self help books showing up on the kitchen table all eventually facilitated a healthier equilibrium at home i credit my parents commitment to their marriage and our family’s well being their courage hard work love faith for taking all the steps they did to grow and learn and heal leaving a path to healing for us kids to follow to this day meanwhile i had good pals music camp in the summer just wait til I tell you about camp big adventure childhood was boot camp for life there were big waves building and i was learning to ride… Bridges Milton Nasciamento Journey Live in the Cathedral St John the Divine Phil Markowitz/ piano and arrangement Download for free at susanosbornsings.com
thank you Susan I too am in AA
thank you for sharing with us
I have a wonderful zoom meeting if you are interested in
going sometime message me is so
every day noon colorado time
blessings
Susan O, I am loving your life story, and yes, the way you are telling it too! Thank you for generously sharing it! I have shared it with an old buddy of mine who lives on the Vineyard, she is sharing it with her sister in law. We talk about it. I hope you are well! I imagine like me you are a bit tired of being stuck at home. It's so beautiful, the snow, but limiting if you can't get out of your drive! Much love to you, Kate Wood