The Weaning and Other Early Childhood Memories

The Weaning and Other Early Childhood Memories

Traveling was the first memory. Waking at dawn sprawled out on top of my mother in the back seat of that Olds Cutlass Supreme. I am not sure what city we were in at any given time. I was mostly concerned with my mother’s breast, my stuffed Charlie dog and if I was going to be allowed to buy a toy from the Kmart whose parking lot we used as our Motel room.

My first memories also contained distinct feelings of worry.  I am sure these were absorbed from the adults who I was living with in such close proximity. My brother was there too. Always with a quick warning to me to not be too happy or childlike because at any given moment the wheel of fate could turn and our situation would deteriorate. How much worse it could have gotten is still a mystery to me.

My parents were traveling musicians. My father would have been nearly 60 during the time that my first memories were embedded. My mother being much younger was the diva. A homeless prima donna belting out contemporary arias in smoke filled hotel lounges.

My mother’s instinct to nurse me was based more on a fiscal decision than any inherent motherly instinct. This fact was revealed to me much later with blurts of truth that were windows to her soul; “We couldn’t afford for you to get sick so I nursed you.”

The weaning occurred when I was about three and a half. The recurrent nightmare that is still palpable to me was the catalyst for this developmental right of passage.  The dream started with me in a house with long hallways. I was running and a man was chasing me. The pursuit was seemingly infinite. Then I came to the end of the house and I realized that I was cornered. My heart throbbed in my throat. I turned and the man reached toward me to grab me. I awakened with a startle and a gripping bite. My baby teeth severing my mother’s nipple and no longer was there milk flowing. The blood tasted salty and alarming. My mother’s shriek rattled the calm of a roadside motel in the middle of nowhere. “Goddamn it! She bit he goddamn thing off! She bit the goddamn thing off!”

I closed my eyes and wished myself back to sleep but not before witnessing my shaken father adhering a simple Band-Aid to my whimpering mother’s detached body part.