Many years ago my mother, due to her hyperthyroidism, was told not to become pregnant because she had lost a great deal of weight and her physician felt the added stress of a pregnancy would endanger her health and life. Her mother, and my future grandmother, didn’t agree and so she had my mother lie on the couch while she gorged her with food. My mother gained weight and became pregnant.

As the due date drew close my mother experienced an early rupture of her membranes, which she did not communicate to the doctor due to a lack of understanding. When she finally went into labor I didn’t seem interested in being delivered. After several days of labor and to quote my mom, “Screaming and tearing up all the hospital bed sheets,” her doctor told her he felt a cesarean section was too risky to attempt but they needed to get me out.

So I presume they reached in with forceps and pulled me out. My mother said, “They didn’t hand me a baby. They handed me a purple melon.” Yes, my mother was handed an ugly duckling. What do you do when you give birth to an ugly duckling? In the story we are told the duckling’s mother rejects him and eventually discards him from the nest. When I read the story to our grandchildren I think about how rare it is for an ugly duckling to ever look at his or her reflection and accept that they are a swan. Even swans look in the mirror and find their faults and not their beauty. Studies show that ugly ducklings are far more likely to become addicts and self destructive as they grow up. So what saved me?

My mother said when they took me home from the hospital my father wrapped me in kerchiefs and then she covered the carriage I was put into and placed it behind the house so no one would see me and be upset. There are photographs in our family album showing my smiling mom standing next to a covered carriage and no photographs of me which proves this was true. So I said to my mother I want to know why I turned out the way I did.

My question was how and why did I make it? What did I have that the ugly duckling didn’t have? The answer of course is a grandmother. I recall reading a story where a teenager living with her grandmother complained that there were no mirrors in the house so she couldn’t tell how she looked before going off to high school. Her grandmother replied, “Look in my eyes and you’ll see how beautiful you are.”

Well my mother tells me my grandmother took me from her and five or six times a day, “Poured oil over you and then pushed everything back where it belonged.” When I heard that I had my answer. I was now being massaged by loving hands every few hours and I know what that touch does to newborns of all species as they gain weight and mature faster than their untouched siblings or controls when a study of the effect of massage on infants is done. Several decades later the first time a woman massage therapist placed her oiled hands on my shaved head I went into a trance which frightened everyone in the room because they were unable to communicate with me.

When I came out of the trance and saw all the people in the room I asked why they were all there. They said they thought I had a stroke or heart attack because I was gone. I said, “Yes I was gone. I went back to my childhood because my body remembers what my grandmother did and I returned to my infancy because of the touch of a woman’s hands.” That event helped me to understand why I shaved my head early in life at a time when it was definitely not in style.

So my advice to everyone based upon my experience is to not have children before the age of sixty. Then you will be ready to love and not judge. I know from my experience as a pediatric surgeon and the births of our five children, including twins, and our eight grand children how concerned I was with the physical integrity of our children and even examined them after they were born. While I was only interested in loving our grandchildren when they were born and ready to deal with whatever came with them.

That is when I understood why we call our children simply children, while the next generation become our grand children and the generation after that become our great grand children. The reason for the various labels I believe relates to our development as loving human beings as the years pass. Hopefully we will all act like loving grandparents someday and on the day when all the children feel loved war and conflict will cease.