Fairy Tales

Once upon a time...remind you of fairy tales???  Fairy tales or just plain tales, I am going to endeavor to reconstruct some of my childhood, hopefully creating  a readable history to verify the tales that my brothers tell!!!  Thankfully, God created us each individually.  Our personalities are reflected in our memories of events.  Although I do know some family members who love to embellish in order to hold their audience captive!  This is dedicated to my daughters and my mother who have pestered me to begin!

I would be curious to know from others the earliest age that you remember something.  My hubby always talks about looking up to the sky and watching airplanes at age 2 and knowing that was what he wanted to do!!!  That has been obvious for the last 67 years!

Trauma can be credited for my earliest memory.  It was summer of 1949.  Parents lived with the fear of polio striking their children, especially in the summer months.  I cannot imagine the angst in each parent's heart every day once they heard of one case in their circle of people.

I was 3 1/2 years old that summer.  Mumps was the diagnosis when I became ill.  I am not sure if I got them from my brother or he got them from me!  However, I must have been one sick puppy as I was admitted to the hospital -- Los Angeles County Hospital.  The memories I have do not fit any kind of time frame or sense of order.  I remember being in a very big room (probably 12 x 12 but I was only 3 and things were bigger to me!) with other children in metal cribs.  I could not figure out how to get a glass of water off the stand beside my bed so I could have a drink.  The child next to me got out of bed and handed to me.  I know to this day I can be a little slow catching on to things but give me a break!  I was only 3 and did not think to reach out, pick up the glass and bring it through the slats on the bed.

I remember being wheeled in my crib through a long, dark tunnel.  Another room for me to stay in...with just a teen-age girl with polio who was receiving treatments.  I remember my parents visiting me in this room.

I also remember another resting place for me... a long porch with a number of cribs.  All these children were receiving hot wool compresses on their legs and arms.  That was the standard treatment for polio in those days.  But I had mumps and menigitis?

Years later, an orthopedic doctor discussed my inability to touch my toes and other things.  He had worked with polio patients (as had my grandmother, a nurse's aid) and felt sure that I had had polio - probably along with the mumps - but in those days under the microscope, the virus would look the same as meningitis and mumps.  That is why I was not as limber as other kids.

I vaguely remember coming home from the hospital, climbing out of the car at my grandmother's house.

It is always humbling to think back to this early time and praise the Lord for His protection and care of me. I so easily could have been paralyzed or crippled but He had other planes for me!  He is the Great Physician!