As I moved into what it mean into my turbulent teens, I was a year older than my peers. Second Grade brought me a severe illness and I was out of school for 7 months. Mostly male Doctors came to our house to treat me. I love that as a fatherless little girl. I just remember that the Doctors were always looking in my throat. My mother said she had put me in the bathtub with cold water followed by ice. and my temperature was 107.
Somehow I don’t believe my temperature was that high for I would have died. In her Southern farmgirl manner of embellishment. I was burning up and that was what she did. Story after stories of my own, I reached my senior year of High School, and I had developed my British Mod style. I made clothing to match what they did in England. I worked in a local department store part time starting at age 14. By sixteen I could work in the same retail store full time, in the summer. I was beginning to find my way into a part time young confused young woman. However, still confused about what that meant. My mothers over protective soul and Downhome religious fundamentalist religion mixed with us living in an all Catholic neighborhood, further muddled my religiosity. I can see the gift my mother gave me beside her bathtub baptism which saved my life and changed my brain into the Artist I am today. She also told me that God was everywhere which allowed my free spirited floating from church to church. She only would come with me to Church if I was singing in the choir. This creativity led me from Church along with the Beatle’s introduction to the US took me to the Music Station in the same building as the Department Store. I had started delivering doughnuts and became the niece or sweet young thing coming to spend time at WBBF radio station atop the Midtown Plaza. All this lead me lead into how I created a colorful Senior year. School became an afterthought.
