Where Were You at Age 13? Where Were Your Children?

This week, my sisters sent me this photo. This was our 70’s kitchen, complete with an avocado green-colored refrigerator that you can’t see. All 7 of us, 6 girls and 1 boy, ate our meals at the round table, sitting on stools. We certainly had a lot of fun in the kitchen, which is why I still love cooking and baking.

No one in my family was a doctor, and I didn’t grow up like many of the other medical students in my class.

I have been remembering these days, in the early 70’s; I can’t remember the last time I contemplated them, so I thought I would share my story.

This picture made me reflect on my childhood, especially my early adolescence, and all the things I went through to become who I was. In all this, I am reminded that only God is able to take all the negatives and turn it into a positive. He is the Creator, the Great I AM, the Father of the impossible.

“All Things Work Together for Good, To Them That Love God, to Them Who Are Called According to His Purpose.”

~ Romans 8:28

My father was a computer programmer who worked on military contracts, bringing home the first downsized computer. It was a reel-to-reel the size of a refrigerator, so we grew up with it in our den. At first, our mom was a stay-at-home mom who I think had a hard time raising 7 children she bore in 8 years, possibly suffering from postpartum depression. Back then, it wasn’t cool for a mom to have mental health issues, much less talk about them.

When I was 13, our parents sent us away to separate relatives for a summer, and by the time we went back home, we had new carpet in the house. And my parents were divorced, each living in separate bedrooms.

Despite the judge telling my dad to give us up to Children’s Protective Services for adoption, he refused. He got custody of 7 kids. That’s why I loved my Dad so much. Every day I opened my eyes, I was grateful to be in my bed, in our house. I was happy that he didn’t separate us. He didn’t even give it a thought.

You see, my Dad’s parents had divorced and his dad remarried a woman who didn’t want children. So they took all their 4 kids, 2 girls and 2 boys, and sent them to separate boarding schools. They never spent one Christmas together.

We regularly saw both of our parents, so it was crushing that they had divorced, but I was too busy to spend too much time dwelling on it.

By age 13, I knew everything.

My Weekday Schedule

I’m around age 13 in this photo, and this was my weekday schedule:

• Wake up and make breakfast for 7 children. Dad was already off to work. I made pancakes, French toast, scrambled eggs. It seemed that occasionally, we ate boxed cereal, but I never liked it.

• Go to school and get straight A’s.

• Come home and make diner for 7 people, plus my dad.

I never watched TV. Instead, I went to my room and read. My Aunt had sent us a box filled with Nancy Drew Mysteries.

One of my goals was to finish all the Nancy Drew mystery books that existed.

Perhaps I identified with Nancy, who was raised by her single dad, who was a lawyer. She had a boyfriend, Ned, but was too busy to marry him. I loved her investigations, the clues, and her interactions with others. Perhaps that’s why I eventually got my Ph.D. in Forensic Science. I still love mysteries and forensics, and I don’t watch TV.

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My Weekend Schedule

• Do laundry for 9 people. Separate the clothes into colors: red, white, and blue. Fold them, and make piles for each person, stacking each one in chronological order from youngest to oldest.

• Vacuum and dust the house. My dad wouldn’t let me go out until this was done.

• Clean the bathrooms.

• Make 35 sandwiches and put them in the freezer, so each child would have 1 sandwich a day for 5 days.

• On Sundays after church, we went to La Fiesta restaurant for lunch.

• My dad bought us a small 1 bedroom, 1 bathroom cabin near Big Bear Lake, and when we went up there for the weekend, I cooked virtually every meal. We slept in sleeping bags and went for hikes. We didn’t ever go skiing, as we didn’t have that kind of money. When it snowed, we would beg my dad, and he would take us to Thrifty’s for 5-cents-a-scoop ice cream. Then we would eat it while walking in the parking lot.

• When we came home, I baked a pot roast with carrots and potatoes. Did your parents use these bags, too?

Okay, maybe I wasn’t the only one to do the house chores, but it sure felt like I was the only one who helped cook and clean. I cooked my first Thanksgiving dinner at age 13. Again, I used a plastic oven bag, something that should be outlawed.

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For all the above reasons, I felt that by age 16, I knew everything. I graduated high school by testing out: I took the California Proficiency Exam and started taking courses at a local junior college. I came down with Chicken Pox that disabled me, so I had to withdraw from college. I knew nothing about “dropping” a class, so my Political Science teacher gave me an “F”.

Years later, I tried to get that “F” taken off my transcript, because significantly it drove down my Grade Point Average and I was trying to get into medical school. After the teacher refused to change it, I wrote to the President of the college and to this day, I have an “Administrative” “W” that shows I “Withdrew” from the class - and I was able to get into medical school with an overall GPA of 3.67 and a science GPA of 3.12.

I was never the smartest in the class, but I had a lot of common sense, which got me through a bunch of clinical situations and helped my patients trust me. For example, a patient once told me that for her cancer radiation, the tech said not to eat any anti-oxidants because they interfere with killing the cancer cells. I briefly looked up PubMed papers, finding it’s an area of controversy with others citing that eating anti-oxidants like blueberries improved radiation treatment efficacy and decreased mortality. I asked her if she knew the surface area of the lungs, and of course I didn’t expect her to know. If you ironed out your lungs, they would occupy as much surface area as a tennis court! So how much damage could eating a whole bowl of blueberries do on that tennis court? You get the picture: common sense takes you a long way in medicine.

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My Son at Age 13

He was a little grown-up too, my “lovie”, with me as a single parent in medical school, internship, residency, and Fellowship. I got no child support or alimony, so I worked on weekends cleaning a law office to pay the rent; I scrubbed toilets, vacuumed, and was grateful to have the job because it paid for our groceries, $240 a month. Once I got my license to practice medicine in California, I did double-duty, moonlighting at Ft. Irwin’s Emergency Room as a doctor - this is still the National Training Center for the U.S. Army. I took a stack of medical school books with me, and worked 24 hour shifts at $50/hour. By the time I was in Fellowship, I had no extra time to moonlight.

My son had to cook a lot of his own meals, and make his own lunch. He also knew how to do his own laundry. And he ended up working all over the world as a chef, a talent that I am very proud of… he carries on the family tradition, as my dad’s parents owned La Paloma, a Mexican Restaurant in San Antonio, Texas, for 50 years.

As you know, I haven’t heard from Carlos but once in the last 10 years, and I thank you for your prayers for him.

I know that he is a very strong person for having had me as a parent, and I will always wish that I could have done better by him. That is my guilt.

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My Daughter At Age 13

She is good now, and we have a good relationship, but at that time, I had been bedridden for a good 10 years. I could feel my life literally dwindling away, like I was literally being flushed down a toilet. So in desperation, I took a flight to Istanbul, Turkey. Over the next year and without any medical advice or help of any doctor, I gradually went off every single medication my doctors put me on but one: I went off blood thinners, anti-cholesterol statins, anti-depressants, and pain medications. I only stayed on midodrine to keep my blood pressure up. I ate everything homemade, no fast food, no cans or boxes.

So while my daughter seemed to grow up “having everything”, she lost her mom. I left the country as my act of desperation, my last resort to help save my own life. For that, I will always feel guilty. Even though I lived, it won’t ever seem like enough.

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WHAT I REALLY THINK

The prayer of a righteous man avails much.

James 5:16

I hang on this promise, because I believe God.

I share these things so that you know that none of us is perfect, but we all have forgiveness and a new life through Christ. I know that God has forgiven me, and that I have learned many things that I never thought I would know.

And like many parents who have regrets, who wish they could go back and change things for their children, I ask my children to forgive me. And I pray for them to grow past the bad experiences and losses, and use them to be stronger - and to help those who need comfort that can be alleviated by their words.

I hang on the knowledge that there is no stronger prayer than that of a mother for her child.

And I have hope.

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LET US PRAY

Thank You God,

For the puddles you give us for jumping in, Dear Lord. Thank you for the trees that beckon us to climb, for the wonderful world You have created for us.

Forgive us of our sins, Holy Father, and keep us close to Your Word, Your Promises. May we always find encouragement and inspiration in You, and how much You love us.

Thank you for loving us so much that You sent us Your Son, so that we may have everlasting life for all eternity by Your side.

Help us to take the bad, and turn it into the good. Help us to lose the guilt and replace it with the blood of Christ. Use the guilt, use the regrets, use the images and videos in our heads for Your good, for Your purposes, our Majesty.

Most of all, help my children, wherever they are. Help them to understand, to know the love I still have for them, the best love that there is in the world. That is my prayer.

Protect my children. Keep Your love and light in and around them.

Help me to remember the good and forget the bad. Heal our minds and souls, we pray. Show me the way.

Give them Your love and light, so they get their courage and self-worth from You. Guide their days, show them the way.

In the Name of Jesus.

Amen.