Chapter 2
I weighed close to eight pounds, was nineteen inches long with platinum blond hair.
A cutting of it is saved in my baby book, the yellow satin cover decorated with pussy willows.
Dad was a gifted photographer and took the pictures that Mom mounted on the thick creamy pages, writing copiously in blue with her Parker fountain pen.
She listed the many gifts I received from relatives, friends, my father’s colleagues.
Mostly checks but also frilly panties, dresses, swimsuits, a Swiss music box, a silver brush and comb set, and an engraved silver baby cup and spoon that I still have.
In my earliest photographs I’m smiling and laughing, especially when Jim was hovering, kissing the top of my head.
By the time I was a year old, I weighed twenty pounds and Mom described me as “a placid, healthy baby… always smiling and cooing… and what an appetite! She is a very fat baby; In fact, is almost overweight.” She noted that I was a “roller.” I never learned to crawl but would “roll over and over” while seeming to enjoy it.
Maybe I found rolling a more efficient way to get from one place to another.
Later in life, I realized I had weak ankles that were a drawback in sports, most of all tennis when I played competitively.
Maybe my rolling everywhere caused my ankles not to develop properly.
More likely, it was genetic. When my father later remarried, his daughter Rona wore ankle braces when she was little.
I wasn’t very verbal, at least not at first. I’d make up for it soon enough, routinely accused of being a motor mouth. I had no awareness of that early on, but my mind was never still. That was a factor in my becoming a writer. I had so much to say about anything and everything.
I’d pick up a crayon or a pencil, having no other way to express my rapid-fire synapses.
At eleven months, my racing thoughts weren’t articulated, my vocabulary most unimpressive.
I knew three words, da-da, mama, and pattycake.
I didn’t walk until I was a little more than a year and a half old, also at the late end of the normal spectrum.
We were living on Alfonso Avenue in Coral Gables, near the University of Miami and a canal called the Mahi Waterway, where there were alligators and cottonmouth moccasins.
Our single-level house had two bedrooms and two baths.
It was pale yellow stucco with terrazzo marble floors and a white brick fireplace.
The huge gnarly ficus tree in the backyard had ropy exposed roots and a lush canopy.
It was great to climb when I was a little older until I happened upon a bright green snake, its beady eyes peeking out at me from leaves.
I shrieked and scrambled back to terra firma, the snake just as scared, undulating to a higher branch.
Our yard had mango and citrus trees, and an early memory is checking on my latest experiment with orange peels.
I was curious about what would happen if I dried them in the sun for several days.
Deciding they didn’t taste good, I tried hibiscus flowers, tiring of them quickly.
I was intrigued by bumblebees and dragonflies, watching them endlessly.
My first few years on the planet were contented as best I know.
I remember visits to the beach where I’d drink Orange Crush, grape soda pop, and Brownie chocolate drinks, usually getting sand in the bottle.
My father provided the most wonderful modes of transportation.
A surrey with fringe on the top, and my favorite, a rocket on wheels that I’d pedal madly on the driveway.
I have happy memories of him taking my brothers and me to the circus, a boat show, the beach, or he might hit a few balls with us on a tennis court at his country club.
I remember the Musa Isle Indian Village where I’d stand behind a thick concrete wall watching Seminoles wrestle alligators, their forced-open mouths exposing wicked-looking teeth.
I thought it was disturbing and rather horrible for all involved.
I felt the same way during visits to Parrot Jungle, the immured colorful birds manipulated for entertainment.
Sometimes we’d go to Monkey Jungle, where I was unnerved by the chattering creatures with spindly furry arms flailing in the air.
Shrieking, they clutched the sides of the wire cages, snatching peanuts off the filthy floor.
They’d look at me with eyes that seemed human.
What made me the happiest was when we went on road trips, spending several days and nights with Dad.
I remember following Alligator Alley through the Everglades, stopping for the best key lime pie I’ve ever put in my mouth.
Our favorite vacation spot was Vero Beach, where the waves were huge, the smokestack of a nineteenth-century sunken steamship jutting above the surf at low tide.
In my imagination it was a pirate ship that wrecked with gold and jewels aboard, and I’d search the beach in hopes of finding doubloons, emeralds, and diamonds that we could sell for a fortune.
I’d envision a treasure chest filled with white and black pearls on the ocean floor near a cutlass and a skull wearing an eyepatch.
We always stayed in the Driftwood Inn, constructed from salvaged wood, a lot of old metal bells everywhere that I would clang.
A breezeway led to our room facing the ocean, the loud thudding surf lulling me to sleep.
During the day my brothers and I floated on canvas-covered rubber rafts.
At night we’d feast on fried seafood platters at Waldo’s Restaurant, the walls covered with fishnets and old photographs.
Whenever Dad took us on an adventure, we were plied with delicious food, and all the soda pop we wanted.
I don’t remember being hungry when he was around.
He surprised us with wonderful gifts like leather lace-up boot skates with rubber toe stops.
He shrewdly got them a few sizes too big, so we didn’t outgrow them in a hurry.
I wore mine for years, replacing the ball bearings I’d lose around sharp turns and wipeouts. I was industrious about applying Kiwi white shoe polish, the leather looking chalky no matter how vigorously I buffed it. But my best present came from a maritime museum or some other pirate attraction.
I don’t know where or what it was but seem to remember paintings and carved wooden statues of Blackbeard and the like.
I was enthralled as we walked around perusing anchors, cannons, Jolly Roger flags, showcases of sunken treasure and other artifacts.
When it was time to leave, Dad told me to pick out what I wanted in the gift shop.
I went home with six fake gold doubloons that I valued more than anything.
I thought I was rich and hid the box in my bedroom where my brothers couldn’t find it.
Now and then I’d shut my door and retrieve the coins from their secret place.
I’d sit on the bed staring at the bright gold metal shining in the light.
I wouldn’t have the gold doubloons for long.
Around this time there was a house fire close to where we lived in Coral Gables, smoke pluming above the horizon.
Racing there, Jim and I stared mesmerized by the flames, the big red trucks, the thick hoses snaking everywhere.
The driveway was deep with what looked like soap suds that I now know was fire-suppressing foam.
One of the people who lived there was a girl in my St. Thomas Episcopal kindergarten class.
I don’t remember her name, but it might have been Maria.
So I’ll call her that. I watched her on the street with her distraught family and imagined how sad they must be.
I felt sorry for Maria even though we weren’t friends, scarcely civil, really. It’s not that I hadn’t tried.
She’d never been nice when I’d strike up a chat in the classroom, usually while I was drawing the hamster, white with a pink nose, its nails clicking on the wire wheel.
A sign posted on the cage warned not to stick fingers through the wires.
I did, and got bitten, bleeding like crazy.
I was doing other weird things like eating globs of white paste out of the big jar. I’d get carried away with fingerpaints.
On my report card in late January 1961, the teacher mentioned my “inclination to tease a lot.” Apparently, I was relentless with the other kids, perhaps explaining why they weren’t my fans.
“Patsy contributes greatly to all of our discussions,” my teacher commented.
That was her diplomatic way of saying I talked too much.
During the sing-alongs, I was loud belting out “My Poor Little Pony” and “Thumbelina.” I couldn’t sit still or be quiet and must have been a handful.
Meanwhile Maria looked on with condescension and disgust. Then her mother left the iron plugged in, causing the electrical fire that destroyed their house.
Or that’s what I was told. I imagined that happening to my family.
I wanted to make Maria feel better and to save the day.
Knowing just the thing, I carried my prized box of doubloons to kindergarten, barely able to contain my excitement.
The room was divided in two sections by a heavy plastic curtain, and I stepped behind it, finding Maria.
She looked dubious and annoyed as I summoned her for a private conversation.
“This will help you buy a new house.” I solemnly handed the box to her, the six doubloons shining under their clear plastic cover.
She stared at me as if I might be the stupidest person ever born.
Then she huffed back behind the curtain with my phony booty.
I was sorry I’d given away something that mattered.
Especially to a snobby ingrate. I didn’t realize the extent of my anger until the next time I was on the playground climbing the monkey bars while a few boys played jacks in the dirt.