I was born quietly in Yuma Arizona. My mother said that birthing me was completely different than the arduous, high anxiety birth of my sister Margaret two years prior. My father was attending to Margeret who was sick with meningitis and quarantined in another hospital. Therefore mother and I were alone in the limbo of late night and early morning. My mother is from Germanic origin and has golden blond hair and my sister was born with pale yellow duckling hair as expected. I on the other hand decided on a full head of black hair at my birth, convincing my mother that I had accidentally been swapped with a Hispanic child. After the reassurance that I was indeed her own flesh and blood I was accepted as a part of the Nelson clan.
My father is a retired marine, so I have grown accustomed to picking up and relocating quickly and often. I was young when we left Arizona, but my memories always draw back to the one heartbreaking moment of learning my neighbor and best friend Elicia had been diagnosed with a brain tumor. The majority of our friendship was building forts in the desert, carrying buckets of water in vain to fill the moats of our castles, and running through sprinklers to try to prevent heatstroke. But any happy memories are dulled and blurred by the Elicia that died, not the Elicia who lived. At my age I couldn’t fully grasp the idea of the monster inside of Elicia’s skull, I could only witness the physical and mental changes. Within six months she had lost most of her hair, gained 30 pounds, and stared directly through me when I came to visit. Her headaches were debilitating, her anger and depression unmanageable. I left her behind