Chapter Eight

They named me Grace, for Grace Slick from Jefferson Airplane because that was who was playing on stage at Woodstock when I was consummated. I always thanked my lucky stars that it wasn’t Jimi Hendrix or Richie Havens…or Sha Na Na.

I was born on Independence Day, 1972. I by all accounts was a happy baby and my folks doted me.

Our farm say my world and I had free range of the place. By two-years-old, I was in the garden, imitating my parents as they placed seeds in holes and pulled weeds from between plants.

Dad gave me my own patch of ground and placed seeds in my tiny hands to plant, which I did with abandon.

Dad always knew when the chickens or cats had scraped that is where I had planted some of my seeds. He would always make sure seeds were planted and protected because he loved the wonder in his little girl’s face when tiny sprouts began to push their heads up through the soil.

As I child, I loved the farm as much as my parents. The cats and dogs and chickens and even the goat, Ferdinand, were my friends.

My feelings about the farm began to change when I started going to school. By junior high school, I hated the farm life and the small New England town.

My mother had been trained as a Montessori teacher and believed children knew their own minds and should be allowed to express themselves.

Truth was that I was shy child by nature and as petite as my parents—my mom 4’9”; Dad towered over her at 5’3”. By third grade, the other children in my class were at least a head-taller than me and was usually first in line because my last name began with A. I could feel them looking down at the top of my head and snickering.

When I turned twelve, I demanded to go by Grace Slick, which led my parents to believe this was an homage to the rocker I’d been named after. When they enrolled me in junior high school, they instructed the administrators and the teachers to address me as Grace Slick and to make sure that I was grouped with other “S” names. From that experience, I was not only moved up in the alphabet, but had learned how easy it was to manipulate my parents.

My parents’ over indulgence was a result of the death of my older brother, Jimi, who was born in May, 1970 and died due to complications of Cerebral Palsy when I was two years old. I had scant memories of my older sibling.

As an only child, my parents smother me. Surprisingly, by age thirteen, I had become the most popular girl in the school. While I was embarrassed to be a farmer’s daughter and we lived in a ramshackle house, our family’s homestead became the place for outdoor parties with little supervision.

By age sixteen, I had her own car—a 1968 VW Bug, painted pink with bright yellow flowers. “It’s such a cliché,” I often complained to my friend Ivy about my hippie parents. “Why can’t my parents let go of the sixties?”

“At least you have a car,” Ivy replied. “My parents said I have to wait until college—when I graduate. They are such stick in the muds. And hypocrites since they don’t expect me to graduate—they want me to get my MRS. You’re lucky, Grace Slick. Your parents are so cool.”

But I did not want cool parents, or a hippiemobile, or a house that used to be a chicken coop, or live on a chicken farm.

My parents may have been “cool,” but they were also frugal. I had a car, but I did not receive an allowance. They were willing to pay me to collect eggs or weed the garden, which I happily did this when I was little so I’d have money to spend a Mr. Cook’s penny candy store. As a teenager, digging in the dirt, or walking through chicken poop was more than I could abide. The day I turned sixteen, I drove the VW bug to Phil’s Rexal and got myself a part time job in town, earning $1.35/hour and a discount on makeup.

During my breaks, I studied the fashion magazines and learned how to develop my own style. I saved the pay from my job, lunch money, and even relented to collecting eggs on weekends so I could have enough money to buy a respectable wardrobe and not have to wear the garments that my mother sewed and knitted for me.

On my eighteenth birthday, I called in sick to the Rexall and took the train into New York City. I was no stranger to New York. Occasionally, I would get to visit mu Aunt Beverly. Also, my parents took me into the city to visit cousins and another aunt and uncle who lived in a third floor walk-up in Brooklyn. The Brooklyn apartment smelled like dill pickles and boiled cabbage. The black and white tile floors were mopped with vinegar and bleach. I did not like Brooklyn any better than I did the Connecticut farm, but I loved Manhattan.

When was only eleven, Aunt Beverly convinced my parents to put me on the train to the city so she could take me to see the Rockettes’ Christmas Show at Radio City Music Hall. After much begging and false promises on my part, they finally relented. Not only did I get to see the show, Aunt Beverly took me on a stroll down Park Avenue to see the windows elaborately decorated for the Holidays. Back home, I begged my parents to let me spend her summers with Aunt Beverly. Those pleas were denied. However, I did get them to agree to an annual Holiday. My annual trips into the city included visits to museums and attending Broadway shows in Times Square. It was Aunt Beverly who convinced me to apply to NYU.

NYU is where I met him—Mason Green—a wealthy stockbroker twenty years my senior. We were married in a private ceremony on a yacht in the Canary Islands, where Green had more than one off shore account. I would soon come to miss the farm and my VW Bug and my handmade clothes.