“You shot out like a bullet,” mom says of my slick birthing maneuver on February 14th, 1956. “Because your head was pointy like a bullet.” And then she adds, “Oh, and you were born alone.” I don’t know what’s worse; a head shaped like a bullet or being born alone. 

Like most moms giving birth in the ‘50’s mine was in Twilight Sleep, a drug induced state provoked by an intravenous cocktail of morphine and scopolamine. It didn’t entirely knock her out, but rather put her in a half-dream. With Twilight Sleep, there were risks to the unborn that included the use of forceps and/or infant suffocation. Perhaps I was lucky to be born alone and even luckier not to have fallen off the table and into the trash like some people I know.

“I kind of woke up,” explained mom. “And you were already there, but the doctor wasn’t. I saw him hurry in the door.”

Like most obstetricians from that era, the doctor grabbed both my ankles and raising me upside down, whacked me on the bottom. Of course, I let out a scream. That’s when dad said to mom, “There’s your Valentine’s Day present for life.” 

Bundled in a hand-crocheted outfit of the palest pink, I was brought home during a heavy snowstorm. Drifts six foot high blocked the front door of my Grandparent’s house in West Orange, NJ; a place my parents were living temporarily. In the long minutes it took to open the door, snow fell on my fresh face and I believe I was touched by magic. To this day, I can predict snow by smelling it; a tremendous talent if ever there were a need for off-the-grid forecasting. 

Women who breast fed back then were often likened to cows sometimes even by pediatricians. Like many babies, I wanted to escape the bottle but couldn’t. Canned PET evaporated milk was my only food until I was about eight months old. Since I couldn’t say no, I made sure to vomit every time I was fed. 

I screamed a lot. I didn’t like my Italian grandfather’s gravelly voice so I cried loudly throughout his visits. I’m pretty sure I didn’t appreciate dad’s four-pack-a-day Camel cigarette habit so I shrieked whenever he came near. I suppose I didn’t like being outside the womb but then again, I’m told, I didn’t much like being inside it either.

“You changed position daily,” mom said. “It was like you were doing summersaults. We didn’t know what end would come out first. You seemed extra anxious to be born.” 

Those born in the Chinese year of the Fire Monkey a/k/a Red Monkey, I’m one, are a restless bunch of opportunists. I admit, I was itching to arrive. Unfortunately, I came out a bit crooked. My left foot turned in and my left eye was crossed toward the nose. Seeing and walking were challenging. At two, I tripped over my own foot and landed teeth first on a small wooden block. The two front teeth that had already erupted were driven back into my head. At the hospital, there was nothing they could do. The teeth eventually came back in, but I was never the same.

Something about that lazy eye and the head-banging accidents it provoked caused me to see things from a different perspective. I believed that our floor could become lava at any moment and the only safe place was the couch. I thought I’d get sucked down the bathtub drain whenever the water was let out. And I was always on the lookout for quicksand as well as obsessed with ways to defy it. But I didn’t believe that hiding under my desk during an air raid would save me from an atomic bomb. 

“She’s a nutshell,” my father repeatedly announced as if I weren’t in the room. I think he meant nutcase. But I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt as the two words are synonymous. (Maybe he consulted a thesaurus.) I just shrugged my shoulders. If that’s what I am, then so be it. Not even I could stop the highly imaginative, sly and unpredictable, ambitious and adventurous, but very irritable Fire Monkey within from running my life.

RAMONA JAN is the Founder and Director of Yarnslingers, a storytelling group that tells tales both fantastic and true. She is also the roving historian for Callicoon, NY and is often seen giving tours around town. You can email her at callicoonwalkingtours@gmail.com.