Early Years
For the first year of Dana’s life, we lived in a little, three-bedroom house in the
small town of Broad Brook, Connecticut. The house was at the end of a long driveway
and surrounded by dense woods. It was like a little cottage you see in storybooks. Just
before you came upon the small house, there was a large white two-story home.
There were stories that a crazy woman, Crazy Mary, lived in the woods out there and
stalked anyone out after dark. Even grown men were afraid to be out there once night
settled in.
I was a stay-at-home mom for the first year after Dana was born. In nice weather,
I would take him out for walks, and in the summer I had a little plastic tub I used in
the sink to wash dishes and I would fill it with water, put Dana’s bathing suit on him,
and take him and the tub outside in the yard to use as his own private little pool.
Eventually, we bought a small blowup pool for him to sit in, the kind you can pick up
at almost any store for four or five dollars. Four or five dollars back then was a lot of
money to us. Dana’s father only made three hundred dollars every two weeks, and our
rent was three hundred dollars, which left us three hundred dollars for everything
else: food, clothing, utilities, gas, diapers, etc. We did not go anywhere and we did
not buy anything that was not essential.
I decided to go back to work to help with the bills, but that did not last long. I
had only been working a few weeks when I got up one-morning sick to my stomach
and started vomiting. All week it was the same thing, and I thought I had the flu or a
stomach bug. When the nausea and vomiting extended into week two, I knew it was
not the flu. I was pregnant with Dana’s sister. I had to quit my job, which was fine by
me. I wanted to be home taking care of Dana myself rather than having someone else
with him all day.
Dana Sr. decided it was time for a change in his life and he wanted to get away
from Connecticut, and so he went off to Florida with a friend to look for work. Dana
and I stayed in the house in Broad Brook waiting for him to send for us once he had