Vancouver, in case you've forgotten...

Page one of a planned 2000-page guide to the life of Mo Whatshername, in the event that she needs it...

You were born on the sixteenth of June, 1983, by caesarian section in the maternity ward of the Waterbury Hospital in Waterbury, Connecticut. I believe it was sunny. Your arrival was more of a shock for our middle brother, Stephen, who had yet to experience such a tweak to his ego, and spent the day stealing my toys. I don’t recall my response, but this isn’t surprising. At the time I was a touch autistic, or at least emotionally vague, and it is entirely possible I didn’t respond at all. I’m sure I was happy, of course, and will include photographs supporting this.

Stephen and I were turned over to Selim N. and his wife Linda—who remains our mother’s closest and oldest friend. We spent the day with them, playing in the family room of their home in the East End of Waterbury, waiting for news. They bought us Happy Meals. This is important, as control over our diets will be a central point of the study of our shared childhood, which will follow.





Although our family lived in a small raised ranch in suburban Middlebury, Waterbury was—if the term can be used—our ancestral home. Both our mother, Margaret Ellen G., and our grandmother, Theresa Ann S., were born and raised among its several nondescript hills, and any number of friends and relatives lived there as well, attending the same schools and churches and generally existing in a manner unchanged from the coming of their immigrant ancestors, most of whom tumbled off ships in New York around 1900, grumbling in foreign languages and smelling badly. People went to church. During the summer, they went to picnics or parish carnivals. Some still spoke Portuguese, Italian, or Polish, and in their neighborhoods, which I will draw out later, or in their small stores downtown you could still see that national character carried, useless as a stuffed cat, across the oceans to America. Some still smelled badly, of course, but the overall tone was Fifties conformity, and it was pleasant enough, and no one seemed to complain.