Whenever I have a few drinks with my mom, like last night, I sometimes find myself cringing when she starts talking about my childhood and her approach to raising me. Sometime during 1973 my mom started reading The Exorcist. I was a year old and still an only child in 1973, so the kid thing was all very new for my mom and she didn’t really know what to expect. My father worked nights, which meant my mom and I were home alone in a not-so-great part of town. So while my mom was reading The Exorcist, she decided that I was scary and had potential for evil. You think she would have been more afraid living three houses down from the local methadone clinic, especially since our house had been broken into twice. Ah but no. Being home alone with a toddler while reading The Exorcist was much scarier.
My mom admitted that she was afraid to check on me at night because she was worried that I’d be speaking in tongues and projectile vomiting. She told me she would stick me in my crib with a bottle and close the door and hope I didn’t make any sounds. Apparently I had a habit of tossing my bottle across the room when I finished it, which is interesting because this is something I still do today. Anyway, my mom said that each night she would brace herself waiting to hear the *whack* of my bottle hitting the wall and that it always scared her even though she knew it was coming.
“And fuhgedaboutit. If we had had those freakin’ baby monnitduhs back then, there’s no freakin’ way I would have left yours on because I wouldn’t wanna know who you were tawlking to in there or what you were sayin’.”
I asked my mom if she ever checked on me after putting me to bed.
“Well, my sistahs were still in high school and used to come ova to the house all drunk and stoned and say ‘Let’s wake up the baby. We wanna play with the baby.’ They’d go in and wake you up and play with you until they sobered up enough to go home. So it’s not like you were totally unsupavised.”
And my mother and my aunts still wonder why I was such a cranky baby.
Sunday, August 19, 2007 at 8: 13 pm
Awww, but you were such an adorable baby. And I love the Baltimorese. I do have some sympathy for your Mom, because I was a little older than you. I was terrified of being possessed, and would not go to sleep at night. Whenever I’d hear a noise in the attic; I’d pull the blanket over my head. I was only like 6 when that movie came out. But I was the youngest, and my older siblings thought it would be funny, for me, to watch it with them; while the parents were out LOL
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AH: Awww, thank you! Actually, my mom is from Queens, NY. Fuhgedaboutit!! I’m so glad I didn’t have older siblings to tease me or make me scared. When I got older I and saw The Exorcist for the first time, I was so scared that i slept with my rosary around my neck and prayed to my Virgin Mary statuette next to my bed!!
Sunday, August 19, 2007 at 8: 44 pm
Don’t babies vomit on a regular basis? What would she have done if you’d had some mashed peas for dinner?
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AH: My guess is she probably would have called our parish priest!
Monday, August 20, 2007 at 9: 44 am
i love this story….
great New York accent
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AH: Fuhgedaboutit.
Monday, August 20, 2007 at 2: 47 pm
I don’t what is more disturbing…
1.) This story.
2.) That I’m related to you, and one of the drunk/high aunts you blog about actually gave birth to me.
3.) The idea that your mom probably called my mom and told her about this “exorcist” book, so she probably never checked on me either.
4.) Or that we both still throw our bottles against the wall at night
XOXO
Tuesday, August 21, 2007 at 2: 15 pm
“Apparently I had a habit of tossing my bottle across the room when I finished it, which is interesting because this is something I still do today.”
Or across a backyard into another bottle.
(We should do that again sometime.)
Wednesday, August 22, 2007 at 2: 43 pm
I don’t know…you’re mother may have been on to something there. Sure, you may look like a perfectly sweet and adorable baby in that picture, but Damian was a pretty sweet and adorable looking baby, too, as I recall. Lucky for you she was afraid enough to just leave you alone, because if she had seen The Omen, things could have turned out much, much differently! At the least, you would have ended up with some weird shave marks on your head from where she had to look for The Sign of the Devil, and at the most, you could have been stabbed through the heart with a cross!
Don’tcha love how people seem to enjoy telling stories like this when they think we’re old enough to “see the humor in it”, or something? I recently had a great Aunt, who truly is one of the sweetest women in the world (which only made this more disarming), tell me, “Do you remember that time when you were little and your parents were going through some troubles, so your Uncle Matt and I offered to let you come stay with us for a few days? Well, you were such a sweet girl, it was a real pleasure to have you around and all, but after about 3 weeks when your parents hadn’t called, or come back to get you, we had to track them down and ask if they were ever coming back for you! Remember that?” Wow! No, I didn’t actually remember that, but thanks for telling me so I can add that story into my memory banks for therapy later, Aunt Izzy!