THE PLUMS OF CHILDHOOD

Chapter One

        I was a complete breach birth, for which, perhaps, my mother has never forgiven me, and that thorny emotional issue, combined with entering the world ass-backwards, may well be the only two, or possibly, even one, tale (pardon the near-pun here) I have to tell.  
        I read in an old diary recently that my mother's first comment upon my reddish hair and general appearance was: "she looks just like my father!" followed by "what did they name her?"  In those days of pre-history (sorry, Mom, I poke fun at myself here too), women were knocked out completely (Hm: alternate title: Knocked Up to Knocked Out?), so she would have been woozy upon our first meeting.  Whereas I, of course, was completely lucid from the get-go, thinking, "Where in heck am I? " That lucky grandfather!" and "Why is that woman UPSIDE DOWN?" (as though my positioning were my fault).
       Time passed. I was born at 7:46 pm in Kentucky Baptist Hospital, a great place for a nice Jewish  girl to blink her first blinks.  The time that passed was 10 seconds. I was hungry. My mother did not breastfeed so i guess I was given some sloppy gook of milklike slop, and it did the trick. It knocked me out. I was then ready to have my own baby.  Ok, not quite.
        I was named for my mother's mother Julia, who had died when my mother was only 15, of complications arising from diabetes.  My middle name, Kim, was just a name my mother liked.  My father's people are from Russia, and though I've always assumed that Shavin was a shortening of some long impossible-to-spell or pronounce Russian name, I have since learned that there is a town in Russia called Shavin.  My Hebrew name is Yehudit.  I cannot remember what Julie actually means. Anymore than I can actually remember Phyllis Shavin's saying "she looks just like my father!"
       I weighed six pounds 8 1/2 ounces, which to this day bothers me; I cannot say "six and a half" pounds, due to that annoying extra 1/2 ounce (probably due to  my grandfather's mustache).  Little things like that bother me, by which I mean they are big things...not that I have people chronically asking my birth-weight -- but you know, it COULD happen that suddenly the world and its inhabitantsall become psychotically interested.  I can't be the only ass-backward nut-job on the planet, can I? This is a rhetorical question.  I'm afraid of the answer. Silence is everything. So I'll shut up now.

                                                                                          End Chapter One