The courage and determination to climb big walls at record speed and work as a pediatric nurse in combat zones stems from a strong single mother who never let society impose limits on her daughter.
Flashback. I’m seven years old, hopped up on sugar cereal and Guns N’ Roses’ “Welcome to the Jungle” is blasting from my boom box. The bedsprings groan and more and more of my white-blonde hair escapes from a haphazard side ponytail with each exuberant bounce. Warm morning light filters through the east-facing window into my soft-pink-painted room, and Benji, our family’s cantankerous mutt with a perpetual snarl, looks up and cocks his head to the side as I try my best to match those Axl Rose high notes.
When the doorbell rings, I leap off the bed, excited to play outside with JJ, the neighbor boy. We had spent the previous morning modifying Whistling Pete firecrackers into, well…into bombs. And now it’s time to go into the desert surrounding our Las Vegas neighborhood and see what will happen when we stuff these explosives into the various containers we pulled from the recycling bin—and light the fuses. I grab my backpack full of bottles and bombs, hop on my bike, shout a cursory “Good bye!” to my mother and off we go.
I grew up under the tutelage of a strong single mother. Her demanding work schedule coupled with her unceasing desire to make me feel supported and loved enabled me to grow up happily wild, without the constant limits our culture all too often imposes on little girls. She replaced the typical admonition “Honey, stop! You might hurt yourself ” with a simple rule: “I trust you. Just be home before the street lights turn on.”
Flashback. I hear my name called, “Now batting clean up!” I adjust my helmet and step up to the plate. In the batter’s box, I take a few practice swings and then eye the pitcher. I bend my knees in active stance. Dip my front elbow. He throws hard—right at me. I turn and duck but, the ball lands square in my back and I go down. Crying is not an option. “Shake it off!” my coach claps from the dugout, but as I trot to first base, I hear snickers from the boys on the opposing team’s bench. When I wasn’t out having desert adventures with my feral friend JJ, I played second base on an open-to-all-genders-yet-still-all-boys, little league baseball team. I may have been grossed out by my coach’s propensity for noisily expelling a seemingly endless stream of mucous when he walked up and down the dugout, but I tried to emulate him nevertheless. I saw a tough nonchalance in that loogie hocking.
I was good at baseball. I could field line drives and hit home runs, but what I really wanted was to be taught to pitch. Being left handed, I would have an advantage over all the right-handed batters. But, despite my constant requests (and my mother’s) , I was stuck playing second base, a dead end position for a lefty. “No point in teaching a girl how to pitch. She’s not going to go much further with baseball,” they said.
