The Forgotten One

CHAPTER 1

September 1982

Do you know how people say they wish they could remember what it was like to be a baby? Unfortunately, I am not one of those people.

My story started before I even drew a breath into this world.

It starts as most stories do. Boy meets girl. Boy and girl get married. Usually, I would say fall in love, but that would not be accurate because my parents did not love each other. My mother told me she did not even like Kit when she first met him. Why they ended up married, I do not know.

My mother told me that May (Grandmother) rushed them into it, and because of her manipulations, I was then conceived.

I was initially supposed to be born in the month of December, but instead, I ended up being born in September.

It all started one night because my parents ended up in a fight. I am not sure what it was about, nor do I care. But, it is what happened during that matter.

Because of this fight, my Kit struck my mother while she was pregnant. It caused her to go into early labor, and she had to be flown from Homer, Alaska, to Anchorage Providence hospital.

I cannot imagine my mother's fear of the prospect of losing her child and possibly her own life if worse came to worse. What could my Kit be thinking? I very highly doubt he was if you ask me. My mother now faced the unimaginable alone, with no one there to hold her hand. Not her family and not my Kit. (Upstanding guy, right?)

Once she was flown to the hospital, she was put in the intensive care unit and forced to push me out.

On September 23, 1982, she gave birth at two lb. and 4 oz: to Nalana Tru Phillips.

After I was born, I proceeded to lose weight and dropped down to 1 lb. 9 oz. The doctors worked

tirelessly to keep me stable and alive. Most of them were not sure if I was going to make it because of my size.

Children born three months prematurely do not have a high survival success rate, much less living healthy functioning lives. I ended up lucky on both accounts in that area, at least.

Girls have a higher chance of surviving than boys because boys have to go through harsher processes in the womb.

I know what you are thinking. Your thinking lucky you for being a girl.

I would agree on that in some ways, yes, and in others, a resounding no. You will understand as my

story progresses.

That is not to say that I did not have my fair share of complications, though right out of the gate. Oh, no, no, sir.

I developed water on the brain, and they wanted to put a shunt in my head to drain it out. Mother was adamant that that would not be happening. It most likely would have left me a vegetable. I had breathing tubes and other contraptions placed into

me. I know they had needles in my wrists to keep me hydrated. I still bear the scars on my wrists from everything that had been done to stay here.

I was in a glass box for much of the time, where no one could hold or touch me without fear of contaminating me with their germs. I did not know the warmth of my mother's arms. It is imperative to have that skin-to-skin contact with your baby after birth to have that close familial bond. I never experienced that closeness.

Where was my Kit in all this, you wonder? In county jail, once he was released, he moved back in with his parents. My mother did not want to take him back after what he did.

I always wondered why my Kit's side of the family never any pictures of me had after I was born. So there are none of me up until almost the age of one. However, my mother had pictures of me while I was in the hospital. So that told me pretty clearly that none of them ever went to visit us in the hospital.

Like my mother and the doctors were fighting to save my life, I guess he decided it was appropriate to serve her with divorce papers. My Kit always did

have the worst sense of timing. (More on that later.)

Apparently, my Kit did not want to fight for custody for me. However, I am sure his parents convinced him that it would be a good idea. He relented and finally agreed to it. My father was a major mam's boy, after all. They funded the costs of going to court because I know we would never have covered the expenses.

So, it started the almost two-year-long battle for me. Back and forth, I shuffled between my parents once I was able to leave the hospital.

Finally, after a long battle, my Kit got custody of me. Alaska courts tend to favor the mother when it comes to granting custody. For a man to get custody in the '80s is very unusual in itself.

Because my grandparents were such staples in the community, they knew so many people, including judges and lawyers. I do not doubt for a second some palms were greased to make sure I landed in my Kit's custody and not my mother's.

So now my Kit was in charge of a child he had never really wanted in the first place. (And believe

me, he made me understand and feel it my entire life.)

My grandmother went back and forth from Anchorage to Kenai because she worked at Wenie airlines. Then after it went out of business, Delta airlines, helping him take care of me as much as possible. After all, my Kit could not do it on his own. After the divorce, my time was split between my parents for a while.

At some point, my Kit thought it would be a good idea to get himself a babysitter to help take care of me.

The woman he picked was someone he had known since high school, so he must have thought it was the right choice. What his reasoning to pick her, I will never understand. Maybe because he knew her, perhaps because she also had a child, whatever the reason was, he could never have been more wrong in his decision.

He could have made a better choice or waited for someone else to come along. He did not choose for my sake, but his own, that is for sure. If he had given even thought about what might have been best for

not himself and me, Kit would have never picked that woman for all the world.

Because of Kit’s single-mindedness, I paid the price. So, began the hell that was called my life and the progression from the frying pan into the fire.

In the next chapter: Enter the wicked Bee and Audra.