In the Beginning

I decided to make my appearance at the worst possible time in my family's life. They were renting a farm, and there was no medical assistance, while my parents' income was a pittance. Vietnam was starting to ramp up, and there was a gasp a Democrat in the white house! Farming was becoming mechanized, and their world was changing. As Mom would say, they didn't have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of. If it is true that the soul chooses its parents and time to be born, then obviously, I have always had poor judgment. Then again, if the soul decides the family, it needs to achieve enlightenment, I did succeed in learning a lot!

This is a family story that was passed on to me: My mother’s anger was the first emotion I encountered in the womb. When old Doc Warner informed my mother that she was pregnant with the remark, “You’re a little long in the tooth to be having a baby,” Mom said, “You’re no spring chicken yourself.”

It was 1963, and at thirty-two, with an eight-year-old and a twelve-year-old at home, Doc was correct: My mom had no business having another baby. She never forgave Doc Warner for his comment. 

Mom used to say, “If everyone waited until the perfect time to have a baby, there wouldn’t be any people in this world”. Mom wasn’t upset about being dirt poor and pregnant; she was insulted at the implication that she was old.

(Long in the tooth refers to horses whose teeth grow throughout their lives, meaning that having large, long teeth is a sign of old age.)

At that time, my mother did fit that description; being pregnant at thirty-two in 1963 was hardly ideal. Doc Warner also knew Mom lived in dirt-poor poverty with no hopes of improvement; she had to be crazy to bring another child into the world. 

Mom always said I was not an accident, “We just hoped you would have arrived a few years earlier, is all.”  I always say that “my brother was eight, my sister was twelve, Mom was old, and Dad thought it was finally safe to have sex again. Guess I proved them wrong.”

Mom and Dad were renting a run-down farm in rural Minnesota with my grandmother (Dad’s mother) and my siblings.  They had no running water, indoor plumbing, or telephone, just an old gray farmhouse at the end of an endless dirt road through the woods.

Their diet consisted mainly of fried potatoes, bread, and side pork. Side pork is the fatty meat on the side of the pig, primarily used for bacon. It is the cheapest cut; selling the good cuts gives them spending money. Any spare change from selling a hog went toward coffee, a pouch of tobacco, and rolling papers.

I think news of another mouth to feed would have been received with fear and worry, not joy. But my sister assures me, “We were all happy to hear there was going to be a baby.  I don’t remember anyone saying anything other than how exciting it was to have a baby on the way”. 

After all, we are Baumgarts, and Baumgarts love family, babies, and children above all else. When the world throws out a blessing wrapped in a curse, you take the good and work through the bad. “A baby is a blessing, " my family told me many times.

I asked Mom what it was like when she was pregnant with me. I was curious about the mystery of life and my story. I had a yearning to be important, to know that I had a story and a history. “I had premature labor for the entire pregnancy, " Mom would complain.

It was most likely the last trimester, but no one argued with Mom. She also tended to exaggerate; when I asked when she began to “show” or look pregnant, she answered: “The next day!” 

She told me the worst part of the pregnancy: “In the last few months, the only thing that would fit me was your dad’s underwear and Eddie Schmidt’s coveralls.” 

I cross-checked this with Dad, and he said, “Your ma looked like a booger on a toothpick.” 

“How much was the hospital bill?” I would ask, desperate to know every detail.

“Too damn much for the amount of work I get out of you!” Mom replied. 

I never knew if she was kidding or if the hospital bill had been that costly.  Of course, they had no insurance; they couldn't afford insurance premiums.  This was in the pre-medical assistance days.  I was born before President Johnson’s War on Poverty. My family would later become one of the casualties of that war. We were missing in action, forgotten somewhere between the War on Poverty and the War in Vietnam.  Collectively, we learned to expect nothing.  When the world knocks you down repeatedly, you learn to stay down.   

Regardless of how often Mom was in premature labor, when the cramping or bleeding began, Dad would drive her in their old $25 car into town to see Doc Warner. “That goddamn muddy road was so full of ruts it’s a miracle you didn’t fall out on the way.”

Doc Warner would tell her, “It’s just nerves; go home, have a cup of coffee and a cigarette, and quit worrying.” 

Medical advice in 1963 was not enlightened. Years later, as a nurse, I was horrified to think of that story and mentioned it to Mom.  “Every piece of that advice was not only wrong but most likely contributed to the premature labor.” 

Mom said, “That’s how things were back in those days.”

Poverty and helplessness create complacency. A lesson from my mother: Never question authority. There is no point in getting angry about something so long ago. 

I picture my pregnant mother at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and rolling one of her homemade cigarettes. She was trying to keep the few farm animals healthy and fed, trying to keep her family fed and healthy, and survive a pregnancy with placenta previa. Placenta previa is when the placenta is placed beneath the baby, and it can cause massive hemorrhage at birth, risking the mother's and baby’s lives without an emergency C-section.

There was no insurance to pay for a C-section if it were needed, and there was no way Dad could have gotten her to the nearest hospital, over 25 miles away, in time to save either one of us. It was also a time when abortion was banned, and the local hospital staffed by Catholic nuns was not likely to allow a medical abortion to save my mother’s life.

In the evening, my brother and sister were supposed to be tucked in bed, with Grandma snoring in the other room.  Then, our parents would sit at the kitchen table, drinking coffee, smoking hand-rolled cigarettes, and talking. My sister, eleven years old at the time, remembers hiding halfway up the stairs, listening to them talk.

Mom and Dad knew it was likely that both my mother and I wouldn’t survive my birth. The only money coming in was from the farm, much of which was swampy land or “slough” that couldn’t be cultivated. “Donna and Tubby are too young to be much help,” Mom said. 

Dad would have to take responsibility for everything for everyone. Mom was the planner, laying out what Dad would do in every possible scenario. Mom was the brains and the ambition in the family; Dad was the heart and emotion. She would have been a general planning a military campaign, talking to a conscientious objector.

Donna never told anyone but me what she had heard late at night, but her anxiety caused her to break out in hives and big red lumps all over her body. There was no money to go to a doctor for a kid with a rash, so Donna had to endure the itching and swelling until I was safely born.

In front of my siblings, the anticipated arrival of the baby was exciting, with no mention of any concerns. No one knew why my sister was breaking out in hives. Secrets were kept; there was no point in worrying the kids about something they couldn’t do anything about.   Donna never told Mom and Dad what she heard, and they never guessed. When they brought me home, Donna couldn’t hold me for a few weeks, until her skin cleared, just in case her rash was contagious. 

Despite the medical advice, both my mother and I survived my birth. At that time, the hospital in Perham was St. James, the only hospital for most of the county. It had a combination of nuns and nurses working in the maternity ward. The other three-fourths of the hospital was a nursing home, called the "old folks' home." My dad always joked, “No wonder you damn kids are so lazy; you were born in an old folks' home.”

Mom said she went to the hospital, “After I put that damn sow back in the fence, she got out every damn day.” 

When Dad called me lazy, I would say back to him, “Since Mom chased the old sow back into her pen every day when she was pregnant, technically, I worked on the farm longer than the other two.  I think it’s time to take a break around here.” 

During Mom’s labor, I encountered my second piece of bad karma, the first being that little spat with Dr. Warner. At that time, there were two types of people in Mom’s world, Lutherans and Catholics, and both looked at the other with derision. Unfortunately, the nearest hospital in Perham was staffed with Catholic Nuns.

My mother held a grudge against Catholics, or “catlicks,” as she called them. As she labored to bring me into the world, the two nuns at her bedside discussed whether she would be done in time for Saturday Night Vigil.

According to my mother, “I sat up in bed and told both of them nuns exactly what they could do with their fucking Vigils, masses, priests, and popes.”

Then, she repeated to me her statements to the nuns on rosary beads and idol worship. She also claimed that she implicated priests in the corruption of altar boys long before that scandal emerged. She expounded on her theory of homosexuality: “It’s those priests with altar boys causing that too.”

I like to think the nuns, working in labor and delivery, understood that it was the frantic outburst of a woman in pain and fear. Otherwise, I am likely cursed in the eyes of the Catholic church. One of my mother’s rants could try even the Pope’s patience.

Despite all expectations, my delivery was uneventful, at least for me.

The risk of placenta previa was unfounded, but Mom was in "back labor," and Doc Warner dared to make my mother walk to her room after giving birth. “That old son of a bitch made me walk when I couldn’t feel my legs!” Mom said bitterly.

When my siblings were born, my mother opted for “twilight sleep,” where she would be sedated, awakened, and handed a baby with no muss, no fuss. But that was in the fifties, and I was born into a new decade. At my birth, sedation was considered harmful to the baby. Nobody had thought that unfiltered cigarettes and black coffee could also be issues. After forty weeks of unfiltered cigarettes and boiled black coffee, my fetal body could have handled any amount of anesthesia.  Thus, my two-pack-a-day smoking habit was born, my love of coffee, and my aversion to opioids.

“Donna was just a perfect little girl, all wrapped up, when the nurse brought her to me. Tubby looked awful. The nurse told me he looked like he had cut himself shaving; his face was all scratched up from his nails.  The entire time I was pregnant with him, I had held too much water, and he looked all wrinkly like an old man. When the nurse handed him to me, he lifted his head and looked like a wrinkled-up old snapping turtle.”  Mom said, describing those first moments of waking up and seeing her babies.

“What did I look like, Mom?” I asked.

“Oh, I don’t know; I never got to see you; they kept you in the nursery to fatten you up.  When we got you home, your dad, Donna, and Tubby were always lugging you around”.  

It was Donna who told me I was tiny, with big dark eyes and chubby cheeks. It wasn’t that my mother didn’t see me or remember what I looked like.  It was the social prohibition of self-aggrandizing she was instilling within me as a child.  In my community, modesty and the realization of being less are driven home early.

My nickname, Poochie (or Pooch for short), came directly from my dad. Only two people still alive call me Pooch: Tubby and a former neighbor. In my mind, I picture the naming scene happening in the kitchen of the Wanderi place, but of course, I was brought home when we lived on the Koskela farm.

Donna told me that when my Uncle Erick and Aunt Hazel brought my mom and me home from the Perham hospital, my dad took me from my mom’s arms. Cradling me, he sang, “Look at my little poochie poo, my little poochie.” As a child, I thought he equated me with a dog, a mutt, which felt like an insult to me.

Recently, I discovered a Yiddish word pronounced similarly to “poochie,” which means a tiny sapling that needs nurturing to grow. Additionally, Baumgart, my last name, is a German Hebrew name meaning "tree farmer," so it makes perfect sense to be called Poochie. Whenever I hear someone call out to a stray dog, saying, “Here, Pooch,” I still turn my head.

It helps to divide my life into the two worlds in which I reside: I am Pooch, angry, suspicious, poor white trash; I am June, educated, loving, tolerant, and a professional. Together, we make one person.

“Donna and Tubby pretty much took care of you when you were a baby,” Mom complained to me, “Between your dad and the big kids, I hardly ever got to hold you.”

Once again, considering my mother’s tendency to exaggerate, I doubt there was much family argument over the exhaustive labor of childcare. Mom also insisted, particularly to exhausted new mothers, “My babies slept through the night from the first day I brought them home.” 

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Dad slowly shaking his head “no” from side to side.

Dad told me a story after an exhausted new mother had visited and heard Mom’s unsympathetic declaration. Dad leaned back in his chair and said, “It wasn’t long after you were born. I was so tired, and you woke up in your crib next to the bed. I couldn’t move Pooch; I was just too worn out, so I woke up your ma. She got up and went into the kitchen. You were screaming, so I picked you up, changed your diaper, held you, and waited. Your ma came back in, threw herself on the bed, and started snoring. She didn’t bring a bottle, and you were still crying.  Then I smelled smoke. I ran into the kitchen, still holding you, and you were screaming at the top of your lungs. Your ma had gotten up, thrown two scoops of coffee on the gas burner, and come back. She didn’t even wake up. She coulda have burnt the whole damn place down. I always got up at night with all of you kids; your ma slept like a rock. None of you kids slept through the night until you were at least a year old. I never tried to wake her up again.” 

Mom was not technically lying when she shamed the new mothers; it was Mom who slept through the night, not her babies. It would remain that way through my childhood; it was Dad who heard my feverish whimpers and appeared at my bedside. It was my dad’s huge, calloused hand resting softly on my forehead, waking me up from fever dreams.

When fall arrived after I was born, and it was time for Donna and Tubby to return to school, they protested, insisting they couldn’t leave. "Who," demanded the twelve-year-old and the eight-year-old, "will take care of the baby?"

Luckily, Mom and Dad were able to convince my siblings to get on the bus. “I told them, 'I raised you two, and you’re both alive, aren’t you?” Mom said.

When they returned home, Donna and Tubby rushed to my crib and leaned over to check if I was okay. I woke up frightened and began to cry, my three-month-old mind overwhelmed by their enthusiasm. Donna accused Mom and Dad, saying, “She forgot me! Did you even take care of her?”