In the Beginning

I came to Earth in November a couple of years after the War. I was the third of a set of Irish triplets. If you’re familiar with the term Irish twins, you know that is designates two kids born roughly a year apart. So, I use Irish triplets to designate three kids born eighteen months apart.

Mom was a devout Catholic, and Dad came from a Mormon family, but he had strongly rejected the Mormon faith. By the way I have a ton of first cousins.

Dad swore to let Mom practice her faith and raise us as Catholics. They complied with the Vatican’s ban on birth control. Hence, me.

 When we were older, we kids got together and counted back from birthdays to figure out our origins. The twins, Terry and Teresa, could count a respectable 349 days after the wedding. Terry and Teresa’s names would become a problem later when Teresa’s friends started calling her Teri. I started to feel like a character in a Bob Newhart sitcom.

 I could go back, roughly, to Valentine’s Day, maybe the first babysitter and night out since the twins were born. My younger brother, Dan, could look back to a wedding anniversary, but my little sister, Jeanne, was a puzzle until Mom opened up to one of the girls later in life and blamed the Robertsons’ neighborhood weenie roast they put on to celebrate returning from a trip overseas. It turns out that dinner dates and parties don’t work well with the rhythm method.

I don’t remember much about my early days, but I assume that with the tasks of taking care of two kids in diapers, keeping house, and cooking, Mom didn’t have a lot of time for the usual mommy things like flirting with and cuddling her baby. I feel sorry for what she had to endure, and I have no hard feelings about it. It even makes me love and appreciate her more. I have read articles about the result of insufficient cuddling in babies, and I’m pretty sure that some of my troubles later in life might be a result of my early upbringing.

In her old age, Mom admitted to me that she was glad I was a quiet baby. I was glad to hear that I wasn’t too much trouble. My quietness could have been genetic. Dad’s army buddies called him “Quiet Hiatt, the Riot”. It could also have been because I probably could hear babies crying while I was in utero. That probably caused some tension for Mom that I could sense in some way. It might have put me off the habit of crying.

My parents doted on the twins. There are hundreds of photos of the twins taken with a lot of different types of black and white cameras. Most were the regular Brownie or similar camera, but some were about half the size of a regular picture, which meant that they were taken with a smaller camera that probably used cheaper film.

I think that there is a picture of me as a baby. I looked through piles of pictures, and I couldn’t find more than one. There are pictures of me with the twins after I got old enough to pose with them. Still more disappointed than angry. I would have liked to have more.

In some of the pictures of my early childhood, I had an angry scowl. I don’t remember feeling angry, so I think it was a combination of me squinting in the sun and the fact that my facial expression, when relaxed, may appear angry, with my eyebrows pointed down. It might be why kids in grade school sometimes teased me, calling me “Hostile Hiatt”. Also, why the leader of a music group I played with for a while accused me of “moping around”. It made him think I was serious when I, as a bass player, teased the group about using capos.  I still become aware of my “scowling” when I am concentrating on something.

I must have shown signs of failure to thrive because at one time a nursing student came to stay with us. I think she was getting room and board as payment for her watching me. I know about this because I once found an issue of the Boise Junior College (Now Boise State University) student newspaper with a story, including pictures, of her and us. I realized after looking for the paper on a visit home that it had disappeared. It might have been around the time I dropped out and began a counterculture lifestyle. I think she didn’t want to have any evidence that she had been a poor mother, which might have been the cause of my hippiness. I also couldn’t find any of the old “angry Stevie” photos.

I don’t know if I was able to bond with the nurse, but she had to leave when I was two years old or so. Our parents had been staying in an upstairs bedroom, but when my sister, Jeanne, was born they wanted to move downstairs to make room for both a boys and girls bedroom upstairs. I don’t remember any trauma from being separated. I do remember that when Mom brought Jeanne home from the hospital, I was disappointed. I thought she was ugly with her red, wrinkled skin, etc. I thought babies were supposed to be cute.

I don’t have a lot of memories from my early childhood, but some have lasted. One is Jeanne coming home when I was about two and a half years old. Another thing that happened around that age was having a tonsillectomy. Terry and I both went in at the same time. Maybe they were having BOGO free sale. I remember lying down looking up at a bright light when someone put what I thought was a washrag over my face. I know now it was probably ether. That was the last memory I had until I woke up. I remember Mom coming into the room afterwards, and she went straight to Terry’s bed without looking at me. I began screaming, and then she brought a plush lamb toy to give me.

Another scrap of memory was probably about this time, just after Jeanne was born. Mom was taking a bath, and she brought me in with her. It might have been her trying to kill two birds with one stone while the other kids were napping. All I remember is seeing the veins on her breasts, which were probably a result of breastfeeding. I might have got an erection and scared her, because that is the only time I remember that happening.

As the junior member of the trio, I idolized Terry, and I followed him around and tried to copy everything he did. When he spoke, I would say , “yeah”, but not much more. As a result, I didn’t develop a gift of gab. For example, during my alumnus interview for Columbia University, Gideon Oppenheimer, the alumnus, more about him later, told me, “Take debate” about a hundred times. He said that even though debate was a full year course, he would talk to the teacher and arrange to have me take the second semester. It didn’t work, but since the debate teacher was also the drama coach, I got a speaking part in the student production of “Father of the Bride”. During the setup for the reception, I would carry a potted plant onstage, and the father would ask me who I was. I had to say, “I’m Tim’s man, Tims Flower Shop.”  I nailed it! I think I should get an award for the most successful and error free theater career in history. So there, Danny Boy!

I am writing this because I recently came to the realization that I have lead a pretty interesting life up to now. Some funny stories and some not so. Think of me as a geezer trying to explain his life to someone he just met. You’ll find that I am prone to going off on tangents from time to time, but I will get back on track eventually. Hopefully. (Used in the wrong context, but who cares? Suck it, grammar nazis!)