I'm the 5th of 7 children my parents had and the lasted planned. They wanted only 4 children and with the lost of one older brother, who was born prematurely, I should have been the youngest child. Mom tried birth control [ills and the rhythm method, but the pill was too strong back then and well Vatican roulette tended to result in large families.

The one thing only made me stand out among my 3 sisters and 2 brothers, was I was the only child to inherit my mom's speech impairment.on top of the learning disability that only I ended up getting any help for in school (12th grade English class I didn't need to graduate.) My oldest sister went to more schools between k to 12 grade and my brothers seem to had poorer grades many years,. Still I'm the one that is made to feel unwelcome at most family events, while my older brother who is actually not welcomed doesn't seem to notice why no one invited him and just shows up anyway. Not being understood as a child has kept me feeling like the outcast still.

By the time my parents were to settle into their last house during my senior year of High School, I had lived in 4 states, 5 towns, 7 homes and gone to 9 different schools. That year I had been looking forward to going off to college and live on my own even if it might end up being the largestest city in the small state of Maryland just 20 miles away. Too my horror though my parents bought a house in the city and moved in that January. Tt was was a mile away from Maryland Institute of Art, one of the colleges I would apply to and only one that I had a good chance of getting into according to my older sister. I had worked hard the last spring to convince the local school board to let me go to the high school across town and there was no way I was going to go to a city high school for 6 months.

I ended up going to MICA and lived with my parents for a few months in my freshmen year. They were rehab'ing a old home in Charles Village and the room I had with it's leaky ceiling was impossible to work in, so I made some calls and moved back to Columbia MD, as an lived in baby-sitter for a single mom. Now days I would have been called a nanny, but this was 1977 and few single moms who worked could afford to pay even just room and board for a college student to watch their child.

Years later I would end up moving back home for 4 months with my 3 girls to escape an emotionally abusive marriage. Those months and the several years after were times to finally heal old wounds and get something few children ever get from their parents, after painful childhoods. Being told "Sorry" by the 2 people who you most wanted to accept you for who you were and made to feel loved. I don't feel the need for my siblings to say they are sorry, as they too were children in a time when the last thing one wanted to be was different. My girls already know I'm sorry for the mistakes I made while they were growing up. While I wish I never got to know their father and marry him, I'm ever so thankful for the children we had.

I wish they could have known what it was like to grow up in the 60's and 70's and watch the world become smaller as astronauts would travel to the moon. While they grew up playing games on the family computer, my grand children have a lap top of their own and will be unlikely to ever play a pick up game with the neighborhood kids. They go to classes at the gym, each week and at 3 knew how to access the internet so to watch video's of their favorite games and shows.