pre-autobiography.

On November 19, 1991, I was born in a small hospital in an even smaller town in the middle of Wisconsin. My father, the doctor at that particular (and only) hospital, also worked at the Menominee reservation.

Now, you have to understand - Wisconsin, and especially where I was, had three groups of people. We had the Swedes, the Norwegians, and the Danes. Most of these people had immigrated here because the farming was good, and Wisconsin is known as the 'cheese state'. I could say that a good 90% of the people had never seen a black family in their lives... and that's when we came along.

My father worked for the military, and he was actually a lieutenant because he gave medical care to the Menominee people. I don't know why that made him a lieutenant, but it was kind of cool to see soldiers salute him whenever he pulled out his ID card.

I don't remember much about the town for the first three years of my life, but my parents saved newspaper articles and have told me why we left when I was five or six years old. This is my story, or at least some of the things that have made me who I am today.

My earliest memories appear when I was around three years old. Mum apparently got tired of reading to me for eighteen hours a day, so she tried to get me into a private preschool. Now, in order to get into the class, you had to be five years of age. I was three, but since I had some kind of hormonal imbalance, I looked like I was six and they let me into preschool.

I remember the feeling of loneliness. I was often lonely as a child, and only because I was different. I had short, black hair and didn't believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, or the Tooth Fairy (and made sure that everyone knew that there was no such thing). I made friends at the school, however. The teacher said that I was the social butterfly of the class and always wanted to tell stories and lead the line out to recess and everything.

However... the friendships didn't last outside the classroom. My Mum would ask parents if their child could come and spend some time with me at my house, where I had this play set with two swings, a slide, a canopy, and a sandbox. Somehow, for three years, the parents always found something else that they were doing instead. They had appointments, they had family over visiting, the child was sick, they couldn't make it, etc. So, I mostly was alone.

I don't remember all of the things that happened, but my parents told me details when I was older and could fully understand them. It wasn't that the people hated us - it was that they felt threatened by a new type of people. It wasn't that they were racist - they just didn't want to accept a new idea or type of people.

My father told me that sometimes when we were in the grocery stores, that people would actually follow us to make sure we weren't stealing things. Sometimes the bold ones would come up to me and put their fingers in my hair to feel its texture. They had never felt black hair in their lives, and they saw it as an opportunity of sorts. It sounds absurd, but it's perfectly true.

There were times that I remember that were good times, though. It wasn't all gloom and a four year old sitting in a cold house reading "Good Night, Moon" over and over again. That was hardly the case. I had my mother read the story to me while I played "Indian" in my authentic teepee that I got for a birthday gift from the chief of the Menominee people because apparently my father helped his daughter get well or something.

My favorite memory would have to be around Christmas. I've always loved snow, and there was plenty of it in Wisconsin. They said that they had nine months of winter, and one month of spring, fall, and summer. It was mostly true. Anyway, it was around Christmas and Dad took me up to the hospital to do rounds and hand out little Christmas trees. I got to give them to the residents, and we went to the cafeteria and he got me one of those big and warm M&M cookies that you always see in the Mrs. Fields Commercials.

My dad would take me outside where there was this hill that stretched out about half the size of a football field, and it was pretty steep. What everyone did in the winter was they sled down the hill and walked back up. Most of the time they didn't have the energy go again after the walk back up, so they only went once.

I don't remember going down the hill specifically, but I remember looking out onto the water (there was some body of water that was completely frozen over, and it was thick ice - the kind that grown men could jump up and down on) and seeing cars off in the distance. That memory always makes me smile, because they would have races with these big SUVs out on the ice.

The reason we left when I was around five or six was because one day I came home and blatantly told my mother that I couldn't have a princess themed party because I wasn't a princess. Of course, she asked me why, and I said it was because people that were black could not be princesses or beautiful. After that, we packed up and left.

Sometimes I miss it, but only because of the snow. Now that I'm over in Virginia, it doesn't snow as much, if it even snows at all. The people in Virginia don't understand snow... if there is even one flake in the air, people will run to Wal*Mart, buy out all the milk, bread, eggs, flashlights and batteries because they are afraid of it.

But I love the snow... I guess I'm just a Wisconsin-girl at heart. I've never lived in a big city with more than 5,000 people, so I don't know a lot of things that my peers do. I was also sheltered (and still am, slightly) from things that my parents decided that I didn't need to hear, see, or do.



That's all I can remember about my childhood that really sticks out in my memory.