She Does Have a Bit of a Temper

Including my parents in my search yielded some unexpectedly enlightening results. The first was a letter that they had received from their Catholic Charities social worker, an apparently delightful older woman named Kathryn Doll. Written in a beautiful longhand script that revealed a solid Catholic school education, the letter was from the woman who had taken care of me in the eight weeks between my birth and my parents receiving me.

Four pages in length, it details all the particulars of my daily routine in remarkable detail. One of the most curious things is the way she only refers to me in the third person:

"Despite the fact that she sleeps so well & so long at nite, she still sleeps a good share of the day."

"She still isn't crazy about her bath--rather, getting ready for it, because she doesn't like being naked--once she's in the tub, she seems to like it."

"She has been an extremely good baby--if and when she does fuss, it's usually because she needs changing."

"She does have a bit of temper which she displays at such times:

• when you undress her for her bath
• when she wakes up to eat and you stop to change her first
• when you stop her feeding to burp her--about every 1.5 to 2 oz."

This is a woman who is a Catholic Charities professional, she never once refers to me by name, the name I would have been given at birth, and never mentions the clothing I arrived in or anything else identifying. Of course, the letter would have been vetted through Ms. Doll before being given to my parents so it would have been returned to my foster mother for revision if they had found anything that they deemed unacceptable.

It's a wonderful look into the days before I became Lisa Sanger from one woman who took care of me and loved me as a newborn infant. For four pages, she details every aspect of my daily routine, from the times that everything should happen in my daily routine through the brands of soap, formula and laundry detergent (Dial Soap, Gerber's Cereal, Borden's Evaporated Milk with boiled water and light Karo syrup!, Cold Power Laundry Detergent and Downy Fabric Softener). It's a well-intentioned attempt to provide a thorough background of what I've experienced in my short life so that my parents won't be introducing me into a totally foreign environment on day one in their home.

I'll probably never know who this woman was. I know that Catholic Charities employed several families in Utica in the early 70s to foster the children prior to placement, but their names were closely guarded and figuring out who they were and more specifically, which woman wrote this letter would be a whole new search for me to undertake.

Still, I am thankful for the early love of this woman: she discovered I prefer sweet potatoes over squash (still true), that I'm not an early riser by my own accord, that I love "bright & shiny objects" and that nothing can disturb my sleep once I've decided to sleep. Here is the first account of my life on this earth, in a kind and loving hand, from a woman who clearly gave with her whole heart to the wards in her charge.

Where ever you are today, dear woman, this little baby now all grown up thanks you!