As much as I felt, as a child, that my life began with my sisters’ birth, that was not at all the case. The first five years of my life were eventful (though not as dramatically as the year of my sister’s birth), and shaped my life in ways I did not comprehend as a child. As my parents’ first and only offspring, during those years I was very rarely left alone. I enjoyed a sort of blind adoration that few infants get to boast: my mother recounted repeatedly to me how when anyone would suggest that my parents might want time away from me, or that they might be exhausted by me, they would react with shock and chagrin because they so enjoyed every moment of being with me.
Other people with their eyes unclouded by unconditional devotion pointed out that I was spoiled rotten.
As first-time parents, my mother and father read many a parenting book. One of their early disagreements came up when I would cry for attention. My mother had read a parenting book that suggested that it would be healthy if, when I cried at night despite being well fed and my diaper unsoiled, my parents not respond to my cries. It would teach discipline, the book suggested. My father couldn’t bear it. After an occasion or two of attempting to ignore my sobs, he threw discipline to the wind and brought me to bed with him and my mother.
I slept most often with my parents, and I far preferred it. By the time I entered elementary school, I would come to wish I had spent more time in my crib, experiencing the world on my own. As it was, I hated the crib with a passion, isolated as it was in my own room, away from my parents unless my cries called them to me. Before I figured out how to walk, I figured out how to push my stuffed animals and blankets against the side of the crib and climb the pile to tumble over the top of the railing and crash painfully to the ground: an event that concluded my parents’ reliance on the crib.
Our apartment was our kingdom and I reigned uncontested as queen. I wasn’t even 2 years old when my mother counted my teddy bears and was shocked to realize that I had over a hundred. (Not all stuffed animals: just teddy bears.) I was the first grandchild on both sides of the aisle, and as such had aunts, uncles, grandparents and godparents galore who doted on me and bought me all manner of gifts that even my parents thought indulgent and ridiculous.
My parents let me indulge. All three of our lives revolved around me, and my opinions were requested and respected long before I had any concept of an opinion. By the time I was 3 or 4, I expected to get my way most of the time, because if I cried, my parents would act. So I cried when I wanted something. Sometimes I cried when another child was playing with something of mine in a playdate in my room. Sometimes I cried when we had a guest who had to sleep either on the couch or in my bed, and I didn’t want to concede either spot.
Occasionally, but not often, my father would scold me. My mother scolded even more rarely: she would reason with me instead. Frequently, while visiting relatives or while relatives were visiting us, I would find myself being scolded for something—a mannerism, a custom, a way of acting—that was assumed to be common sense but was unknown to me. I adored my relatives, but at the same time became extremely wary. As I grew older, I also became aware that my mother was stricter in the presence of her family, suddenly cautioning me for things that she would otherwise ignore.
Even with all of the leniency and freedom I was allowed, still I looked for more. I didn’t want to have to put my toys away if I’d paused in the middle of an elaborate make-believe session with my dolls and toy cars. I wanted to avoid displeasing my parents. Once I discovered sweets (an indulgence that my parents were careful to keep from me for as long as possible by any means necessary), I wanted to have them by any means that I could find.
On my fourth Halloween, at my maternal grandparents’ house, I made a blanket fort for the purpose of hiding with my candy so that I could eat it all, away from my mother’s careful rations. To my grandparents’ amusement, I gave myself away by failing to clean up the wrappers, inviting a rare scolding from my mother.