Rethinking Normal: A Memoir in Transition - Tapa blanda

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Katie Rain Hill is a student at the University of Tulsa majoring in anthropology and sociology. She wrote this memoir while studying for exams, writing term papers, working part-time as a pharmaceutical technician, and advocating for LGBTQA rights. Rethinking Normal is her first book.

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Rethinking Normal

1

BLUEBERRY BLUE

I was born on May 12, 1994, in New Bern, North Carolina, with my umbilical cord wrapped around my neck. As soon as I came out, the doctors flew into a frenzy, grabbed me, pushed my dad—who had been waiting to cut the cord of his firstborn son—out of the way, cut the cord themselves, and rushed me to a table to try to revive me. My mom caught a glimpse as they whisked me away—my face blueberry blue from lack of airflow—and she started screaming and crying.

“Where’s my baby? Where’s my baby?”

She kicked and thrust, trying to get out of the stirrups and out of the bed, while doctors held her down.

I could have died, almost did die. The doctors pinked me back up and brought me to my mom.

“Are you sure he’s okay?” my mother asked.

According to my mom, I was completely silent—eerily so for a newborn—fast asleep in her arms. My mom was terrified that I’d somehow been damaged from the asphyxiation, that I might be mentally handicapped like her second son from a previous marriage, Josh, was. The doctors reassured her that everything was fine. They brought my dad back in, and he and my mom stared down at me. Soft, full lips. Long eyelashes. And when I slowly opened them, deep blue eyes just like my dad’s.

“Look at him,” my mom whispered. “He’s an angel.”

• • •

The very first question people ask when there’s a baby involved is, “Is it a boy or a girl?” And the instant that question is answered, people begin to place prejudgments and expectations onto that baby. If it’s a boy, they imagine the clothes he will be dressed in, what toys he will be given, what sports he will play, the woman he will fall in love with and marry. If it’s a girl, they envision party dresses, a bride walking down the aisle, a mom-to-be giving birth herself.

And so it was with me. My parents knew beforehand that they were having a boy, and planned accordingly. After I was born, they wrapped me in my blue-and-white blankie and took me home from the hospital to my blue-painted bedroom. The first couple of years of my life, I barely made a peep. I was the quietest baby you could possibly imagine. I never cried. I never whined. My mom wouldn’t even know when to feed me or change my diaper. I would just lie there with that stupid happy baby face, with a diaper full of poop, smiling at everyone. My mom says I was the happiest baby she’s ever seen. It was a happiness that would not last long.