I was a homely science nerd and a virgin at 14 when  I first got pregnant.  .  Dad, an ulcer-plagued Prudential exec who started as debit man to the steelworkers and dockworkers of Pittsburgh, died when I was eight,  Son of Sicilian immigrants who settled in Washington County Pennsylvania to raise tomatoes and chickens,  Dad had French in high school and told me Joi Aimee meant Joy of Love.  He and mom had eleven pregnancies, six live births and lost their oldest, Jamy {for Jack and Myrtle} to menigitis before she was six.  I  was the baby of the family, born a bit premature when mom was induced between games two and three of the 1960 world series.

Bill Mazeroski

Dad died on June 13, 1969, enraged.  He went out after dinner to move a pile of gravel my brother didn't finish  Dad built our Washington County, Pennsylvania, home up from a four-room starter house he and mom bought.

Mom moved us to the San Fernando Valley in September 1970.  The Sylmar quake woke us early on her 54th birthday.

I was a geeky science nerd and book lover.  Sixth grade was a blast:  part of a smart girl clique {still email friends with two of them 50 years later}, pull-out gifted program twice a week, congenial dodgeball group at recess {until someone got hurt and their mother complained}

I had an amazing summer school ecological biology class before eighth grade.  Mr Goodman took us through the major phyla from protozoa to mammals and took us on twice weekly field trips.   We toured the Toyon Canyon landfill, explored tidepools at Leo Carrillo Beach , and toured a Safeway plant making ice cream sandwiches; the filth was horrifying..

Mom bought me chemistry sets and other science kits like a hydroponics set , found a sturdy lab bench at a garage for my middle school desk and didn't object to the fetal pig in a jar of my shelf or the stink of sulfur  when i played with my chemistry set.  She drove me to restock my chemicals. 

Non-binary first- born was a forgot condoms on our honeymoon mistake.  

Their hip dysplasia cost $100,000 in medical and drained thousands of dollars from my transcription [production each month as i coped with diapering a kid in a hip spica cast.

My mom began dying of smoking-related bladder cancer.  I conceived D out of some inchoate desire not to cope.  My body malf'd at 27 weeks, my cervix made incompetent from a LEEP for cervical cancer.  After we got pneumonia from a week of inpatient tocolysis D was from my womb untimely amniotomed.  Total cost $1/4 million.

No doctor in 1974 would have consented to sterilize the 14 year school slut.