Life Story--Age: Birth: I Once Was a Wanted Child

I think I'm going to start writing bits and pieces of my life story, and then see how it all works out. Maybe, when I am done with it, I will make it into a book. :) It might help some of you see who I am, and why I am the way I am.

I was born Veronica Lee _________, in a small town in Minnesota. My mother was named Sharon. She also was born in the same town I was. Her mother was born in the same town. My father was named Arturo, and he grew up in a small town in Mexico. I was their second pregnancy. The first one ended tragically, as my mother was riding her bicycle to work, and was hit by a car. She miscarried in the fifth month. I think my life would be completely different right now, if I would have had a big brother. But, nonetheless, I was born, and here I am.

My father was the one who wanted to name me Veronica. My mother wanted Jennifer (I am NOT a Jennifer, I don't think). If I were a boy, my mother wanted Colby and my father wanted Oscar. My father would have won. He always won those types of arguments. I was destined to be a Veronica or an Oscar.

My middle name is a family named, passed down from generation to generation.

I was a wanted child. At least at that point in my life. I had a mother who loved me and a father who adored me. I was spoiled, about as spoiled as a child could get. I was a first child, a long-awaited child, and I was adorable (at least I am told I was). I grew up in a little house, on the end of a little block, in a little town. It was a perfect life. For a while.

Then, my father started feeling like his perfect life wasn't so perfect anymore. He was a mechanic who bought old cars and fixed them and resold them in his spare time. But, he wasn't getting much business anymore. My mom worked for a turkey processing plant. My father had a college education, while my mother passed high school with poor grades. But at this point, I was still his treasured little girl. And, as reward for my being so precious, I was spoiled. Rotten. Yep, I was given everything I wanted, and if I didn't get it, I was that child throwing full-blown tantrums, kicking and screaming and yelling in the middle of the store. And, if I threw a tantrum long enough, I got what I wanted. I was daddy's little girl, and he spent a lot of his spare time with me, taking me for rides, teaching me to read when I was three, singing songs with me.

But, somewhere in all of here, my father started feeling like something was missing in his life, and went a searching for it. He must have found it, or at least he did a good job searching for a while.

I will go into more detail later on the exact causes of why, but let's just say I don't have a lot of memories of my past, but they are starting to come back to me. My two first memories of this time period will help to illustrate what my life was becoming like, and who I was then. I don't remember which one came first, but I was about three or four years old in both memories.

The first one I will describe tells you what sort of child I was. I was in the store one day, and I had decided that I was going to get a toy. But my mom said I wasn't going to get one. I paid no attention to her and set my heart on either a broom with a dustpan or a vacuum cleaner in the toy section.

My mom was trying to be equally firm that I wasn't getting a toy. So I threw a full blown tantrum, Veronica-style. My aunt, who was with, told my mom to walk away and pretend I wasn't her child. So my mom walked over to the next aisle over and was telling my aunt in a loud voice "I'm so glad my child doesn't act like THAT" for the benefit of on-lookers. Of course, I hear her, and so I run over to her and yell "Mommy, I am so glad you didn't leave me in the store again like last time," to my mother's embarrassment.

Finally, my mom, being the easily persuaded type that she is, gave in. She agreed to get me either one toy or the other, but I had to pick only one. Which warranted a mini-tantrum. I made it a short mini-tantrum because I still had to decide which toy I wanted. I choose the vacuum, and we headed home, me smiling and skipping and happy.

When we got home, I discovered, to my dismay that THE TOY VACUUM CLEANER DIDN'T EVEN WORK!! Needless to say, I was upset, and was demanding and insisting that my dad take me back to the store to get me the broom set "if it worked for real." Which he did.


My second memory is one that explores a lot about what was happening in my family life at the time. My father took me out for one of our drives. We wound up at a house with a lady who had about 5 kids around. I was sent off to play with the other children, while my father and his "friend" were going to go "talk to each other" in the bedroom. It was "important talk" and so they were not to be disturbed. All of the children were Hispanic, and dark-skinned. I enjoyed playing for half an hour, and then we drove home. When I got home, I happily skipped into the house and told me mom "I got to go to Mexico today, and play with all the Mexican children." To which I was promptly sent off to bed.

The next time I saw that lady again was about nine months later, and she was screaming at my mom she needed to leave her alone and let her live her own life and do whatever she wanted, and to not be so possessive of her husband. She had a little baby girl in her arms, who was introduced to me by the woman as "your new sister, Penelope."

So, as you can see, this story is going from a peaceful little happy family, where I was the center of attention, to a disruptive, abnormal family where I was to fall out of favor. And it doesn't get better from there for a very, very long time.