Health is Wealth

My earliest experiences were three major surgeries by age six -- most of which fell on major holidays and vacations and were, I have since learned, completely unnecessary. My mother was in love with the drama of hospitals and doctors, and still is always threatening to die. This has been true for as long as I can remember. Come home for Christmas--it might be my last! She says every year. I don't like threats even ones that I'm not afraid of. I grew up fighting for my life, always being dragged off to the family doctor, gastroenterolgist, shrink for a Rorshach test, foot doctor, skin doctor, eye doctor, chiropractor, dentist, orthodontist, psychiatrist, radiologist, and more. Who was paying for all of this? Don't ask. She tried to get my bio dad to pay even though she was married to a millionaire. I grew up thinking that I was so fragile and sickly that I wasn't going to live to be sixteen. I am 51. Luckily another part of me, a much stronger and deeper part aligned with my Grandmother Sophie. She had a nurturing and calming effect on me. She made my sister and me French toast and loved to serve honey dew and cantaloupe with toothpicks at a card table in her apartment living room after a day on Brighton Beach. She had a secret candy drawer filled with just chocolate. Once she took me to see Charlie Chaplin's MODERN TIMES and we laughed until tears came streaming down. At Christmas we took a subway into town to see the Rockette's at Radio City. Once she took me to a specialty store especially for lefties to buy me left handed scissors. Grandma swam in the ocean each morning at 7AM before taking the subway to NYC for work as a hostess in a restaurant. She was the perfect hostess; smiling and polite. "A high SQ" (social quotient) my Aunt Gertrude used to say. Grandma walked or bicycled everywhere. She often worried that I was always indoors in the basement painting, not getting fresh air.