An eclectic Composition

How do you answer the question: Who are you??? 

Every good story has a beginning, for me that would be January 30, 1984 on a cold winter’s day in Iowa. The setting is a typical mid-western, small-town mall, home and furniture section of your average department store. On this most-average of days a young, pregnant mother of six feels the familiar pangs heralding the immediate onset of labor. Scared out of his wits, the young furniture salesman encourages the young mother to sit down (on a water bed no less!) to “rest” for a few minutes. Thankfully the young mother trusted her carefully honed instincts and knew that sitting down for any length of time would increase her likelihood of delivery right there on a waterbed in the middle of an Iowa department store. “No thank you!” she replies politely, waddling quickly to the exit, clutching her bulging stomach. Shortly thereafter, in the nearby hospital, an eight pound, black haired, squalling baby girl entered the world. “Determined” (some would say “bull-headed”) is a word that would define much of my life.

My story isn’t all that unique. Like many, I grew up in a large family (eight children in total: 5 girls, 3 boys). My mother taught school, and the first four years of my life were spent in perpetual preschool (taught by my mother). Most preschools would have forced my mom to put my sister (younger by 2 years) and I into daycare, but thankfully the reservation school where my mother taught was so grateful to have her that they were willing to overlook the obvious age violations.

During my early years, my father focused most of his efforts on building his Chiropractic practice in the small non-Native community we were never quite a part of. The first Native doctor from his reservation, my father had a lot of racial red-tape to cut through. It helped that, at first glance, my father would easily be mistaken for a “white” man, but it took a lot of patience, persistence and just being good at what he did for his practice to, well, not quite “thrive” but to make enough to support eight growing children. One thing I regret about those early years, and in talking later to my dad, a regret we shared, was that he didn’t live more. I wish he would’ve bought more horses so we could’ve done more riding. The one horse we did own was an ornery old thing that threw at least two of my siblings and sufficiently scared the rest of us into steering clear of him.

... stay tuned for more!