Where do I start? The beginning...

For me the beginning would have to be when I was three years old. The fourth of July at Walnut Hills, this is the first memory of my life. This is the day our family changed...

We had camped often at Walnut hills. It was 1981, my sister, my dad, my mom and I were enjoying the water and the sun. Up above the lake was a playground, my dad took me and my sister up there so that I could go down the 'Big' slide. My mom called out 'Don't let her go up that slide by herself, Bob". My dad mumbled something under his breathe that I couldn't quite catch.

We made the short walk up the hill to the slide, my dad let me go up by myself with my sister, 6 1/2 years older than me, trailing closely behind. I remember being at the top of the slide and pausing to look back at my big sis, my foot slipped and I slid through the opening between steps, falling head first onto the cement holding the slide in place.

At this point I was unconscious, my father ran to me and began his assesment, running his hands from the top of my head down to my neck. When his right hand got to about the middle of the left side of my skull, his fingers found a deep depression that ran about the length of my head. His heart stopped, and though I can't be sure, the words of my mother must have ran through his head. If only...

I woke up in my dad's sunbird, looking up at my mother as she was gently stroking my cheek, reassuring me that everything would be ok. I remember wondering , what would be ok?
I didn't feel pain or fear, just confusion. Because of where we were at, we had to meet the ambulance.

The next thing I remember is waking up in the hospital bed and having needles in me every hour. I remember having my head shaved and having a huge gauze wrapped around it. I think that the rest of my family remembers more. My sister feeling guilty that she couldn't catch me, my dad feeling guilty for letting me go up there by myself, and mother feeling guilty for letting my dad take me up there without her. I put a rift through my family for many years, estranging my father and sister and my mother and father. I just wish that they could have understood that these things happen, that I came through it alive and well. But neither of them could put their guilt aside long enough to see that.