My Beginning

When I was born, women didn't have the vote. Of course, this didn't concern me much at the time, but later, when I was of voting age, I was very glad that I could do it. It was hard to imagine that women had only been able to vote for twenty years.

In the beginning of my life, I was mostly concerned with getting fed regularly, and with being kept warm and dry. My earliest conscious memory is of being awake in the dark in my crib, crying because I was cold and uncomfortable, but nobody came. I found out later, when I was older, that my mother was ill, and that was why she didn't come to tend me as she usually did.

Eventually, I stopped crying, and then began to try to figure out how to get out of my crib. I could see a crack of light from the hall, as the door was slightly ajar. I think I wanted to go find the help that wasn't coming. I tried and tried to get out of my crib, and kept falling back over and over, but, finally, I made it over the side for the first time. As I started toward the door, it opened wider, and there was my father. He told me later, that he was never in his life so surprised as to see me toddling unsteadily toward him in the dark.

I think I remembered this incident so clearly, because it was the first time I realized that I and my mother were two different people. We had always seemed to be connected somehow. But when she didn't come to help me as usual, I suddenly became aware of myself as a separate person.

Another reason it stuck in my memory, is that it was the first time my father came to help me in the way my mother usually did. Now he was no longer just a figure in the background, but a real person, who took care of me and showed me love. It was the beginning of a deep bond that lasted as long as he lived. That was a long time, as he lived in good health until he was just three months shy of 100 years old.

This incident happened just before my first birthday, in the same year that women got the vote.