BED WETTING NOT ALLOWED

It was in the middle of the night, when I felt a warm and wet feeling beneath me! I was ashamed when I wet the bed. However, nothing compared to what happened next.

"You are seven years old, how can you be wetting the
bed? The next time you wet the bed young lady, you will sleep on the
floor!!"

I took a good long look at the hard wood floor. Dismayed. I thought to myself, I will wee-wee before bedtime from now on.


I hurried off the bed from my spot in the corner, against the wall. I hurriedly changed the sheets, while listening to my grand-mother.


She eventually chipped in and gave me an extra towel to rest under my bottom to prepare for my next accident. I never wet the bed again. I awoke every hour, on the hour to check under myself. That was the longest night for many years to come.

To this day I cannot sleep through the night.


Bed-wetting
(Enuresis; Primary Nocturnal Enuresis; PNE)
by Debra Wood, RN

Definition
Bed-wetting is involuntary urination during sleep in children over age five. Typically around ages 3 to 5 years, children become able to sleep through the night without wetting. While infection or anatomic abnormalities of the urinary system may explain bed-wetting at night, most cases have no explanation and are referred to by doctors as primary nocturnal enuresis (PNE).

Causes
When children are sleeping, the bladder may signal the brain that it is full. But the brain must return a signal for the bladder not to empty. Then the child must wake up and go to the bathroom.
Causes of bed-wetting are varied and may overlap. Contributing factors include:
Bladder control that develops more slowly than normal
Greater than average urine production at night
Genetic predisposition
A sleep disorder, sometimes related to enlarged tonsils or adenoids
http://www.aurorahealthcare.org/yourhealth/healthgate/getcontent.asp?URLhealthgate=%2212021.html%22

STICK FIGURES ARE NOT REAL

My first attempt at drawing, was a bare stick figure.

Studying it after I completed the drawing, I thought that people did not look like that.

I thought; I will do a better picture, tomorrow. I drew another picture the following day, with two sticks for each limb. Now, this' more like real people, ...practice makes perfect. I thought to myself.

Alone, outside our cottage while gram-ma was out, I did a lot of thinking.

Well, after all my chores were done and I was exhausted from trying to catch grass quicks, and humming birds in the garden (small birds).

Mischievous? Yes! I had to stay busy or suffer boredom.

Until, a new family moved into our yard with a playmate.

More on my playmate in the upcoming bio.

SEVEN YEAR OLD HOUSEKEEPER?

Yes. I started making the bed every morning according to gram ma's specifications.

"Make sure there is not even one wrinkle, I should be able to bounce a penny off
that bed....you know that so-n-so's, little girl is younger than you and she
makes the bed like that."

Her bed had rolled pillows that made it look fancy.

Her bed was so big it felt like I was climbing up onto a bus. To reach the far corner-side, I had to climb across the center. Still, all the while she made it clear that there were to be no wrinkles.


I followed her instructions on rolling the pillows and placing them, so they appeared to be truly round. That was a tough challenge, but I liked the outcome.


Washing my ribbons and socks after school every weekend was one of my chores. I did it without ceremony, but it was a short lived respite from near boredom.


Before she came home one day, I got through with all my housekeeping, and decided to fill my time with my own desires.

I searched and found a pencil and piece of paper, to draw something. I drew my first person.
It was a stick figure.

Visit my online gallery, now: http://www.artandolls.com/

MY FIRST FAINTING SPELL

My first fainting spell was a good thing because it was a turning point, that lead to my cooking at seven years old.

It was a lazy Sunday morning, when I awoke late to find myself alone at Gram ma's. She had left earlier that morning. Returning at about 10am, to find me unconscious on the floor.

I felt dizzy, my head throbbed.....I was nauseous. I was shivering and tingling with goose-bumps all over my body, as the room whirled around me. The floor started to come up to me faster and faster, until I couldn't stop it from slamming into my face. BANG!!! .....I was gone.

The next thing I knew, I was getting slapped in my fuzzy, tingly face. My entire body felt cold and light, almost as if I were an invisible person disconnected from my physical body.

Gram ma, shouted my name repeatedly "Dorrett... Dorrett!! All the while slapping my tingly face with ice cold water. When I opened my eyes she asked with a relief in her voice "Did you eat anything when you woke up this morning?" I answered weakly, "No mommy." Her response, "You mean to tell me that a big girl like you don't know, to make yourself a little breakfast?" ( I was 7yrs. old) I tried to answer but my parched cracked lips wouldn't part, ...I was speechless.

She scolded, "Well, from now on I want you to start making a little breakfast when you wake up in the mornings."

This blog represents some of the bones of my upcoming book.
Details housekeeping coming up, next!
Please leave feedback. Thanks!

MY FIRST MOVIE

This is not my real grandmother's picture. (This picture looks so much like her-representational purpose, only)

Grandmother (daddy's mother) took me to see my first movie. She loved to get dressed up and go out. I loved the big-screen. However, she told me to cover my eyes during the scary scenes.


On my second visit, gra-ma had moved to another home. She enrolled me in a local school near her. It was a short bus-ride away, near Busta Mante park (details in book).


I was anxious, to learn how to read, because I wanted to know what the cartoons were saying in the Sunday paper. Within two weeks, I was reading the comic strips. Yes, I was pleased.


Her new place was set in a huge yard with separate little attached homes, with a court-yard in the center of it (layout drawing in upcoming bio). As you enter her new home, from the gate; on the right side is an L shaped veranda. Then leading down a long path to a little cottage straight ahead. In front of it was a flower garden.


Across from which was another garden, alongside the veranda on the right side as you walk down into the yard. Towards the rear of the courtyard there was a separate cottage where lived a beautiful, dark skinned lady by herself. Behind her little home were huge, towering trees that extended from behind an old fence.


To the right of the courtyard, were different convenience rooms in a row along a plain concrete veranda with wooden posts that held up the roof. Unlike the front veranda with its shiny, polished tile floor. The convenience rooms were bathroom, kitchen, toilet room, shower room(detail in upcoming book).


There was even a one-room apartment where lived a fat blind grandmother.

I felt sorry that she was often left isolated in her dark room. So I often visited her to keep her company and entertained with small talks. Her relatives would sometimes take her to the center of the court-yard for sunning, or set her outside her room in a rocking-chair.



Gramma, seemed to move back and forth a lot. I remember, her moving from the one-room home with the big veranda to the two-room cottage across from us facing the front gate, and back again, in that same yard. Anyway, I took on the job of watering the gardens at that home. I remember feeding left-over rice to wild birds, daily. Then trying like a cat, to catch them as they ate.


On one occasion, I remember gramma's friend speaking with her about me, "Mrs. Harris, your grand daughter's hair needs cutting, so she can put on weight!" Gramma's response was, "Oh, no, she is just a picky eater." The woman enquired about my age, "Then how old is she, about eight? " (I felt upset that she guessed me to be older!) Gramma said, "No... about 7 years old." The woman remarked, "She is tall for her age, but Lord the hair is sucking her, you have to cut it, so she will gain some weight." What you use on it, Castor oil? "No, nothing but Vaseline, Castor oil is too stink."


The weight of my thick un-straightened plats (braids), laid on my chest and down my back like ropes. For church my hair was platted in two, with the front half combed back from my face, over the plat behind my head, and adorned with ribbons.



I guess my delicate frame, gentle oval face and big almond eyes, made me look as if my hair was getting all the nutrition.


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SCHOOL AND WORK IN AMERICA

I have started my auto-biography; A Jamaican Princess.
I lived in Jamaica until I came to America at age 13. I am 52yrs. old, but I look like I am 29.



I survived a servantile youth. Continued to serve my mother, Brother and sister,

after coming to America. I landed my second baby-sitting job at age 14, in America.



I found my third job, working at The U.S. Trust Co. on Wall Street during my second year of high school. During my third year, I pursued my acting career and went on a few auditions , one was at the Apollo theater, in NYC. I had dreams of becoming a successful actress, and saving myself for marriage. However, I had to move out on my own during my fourth year of high school. I supported myself by caring for a mentally retarded teen aged girl. Somehow I maintained high grades and stayed on the "college-bound" list at Erasmus Hall, H.S.



From 1972 to 1975, I attended The Little Theatre school while I was in high school. During this time I learned Marshal Arts as a means of defending myself from school bullies (details that lead to that-in book). At 23 yrs. old I attended Brooklyn college. During my first year of college, I worked as a portrait artist and stripper in order to pay for my living expenses.



I remember investing my rent money to pay for a spot in the Flatbush indoor-flea-market in B'klyn. It was during this time that I met Steve, and agreed to get married. That was a major mistake, that hurt me badly. I trusted him.



I went from dire poverty as a child to owning my own home. I am a portraitist/Publisher.

LINK: DISCIPLINING CHILDREN-JAMAICA

Dorreth Witt http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3256/2753851064_8325a911bb.jpg%3Fv%3D0&imgrefurl=http://flickr.com/photos/barrybar/2753851064/&usg=__cHJMcfrzj-QO-yoNIv4-mdcV6is=&h=500&w=456&sz=163&hl=en&start=66&um=1&tbnid=DBgppKV9BZyETM:&tbnh=130&tbnw=119&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dwhipping%2Bchild%2BJamaica%2BWI%26ndsp%3D20%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26start%3D60%26um%3D1

THE SEARING BELT WHISTLED

My paternal-grandmother's visits, usually ended with me going to stay with her a while. That meant separation from my beloved brother, Orien. Spending long visits with her was like being cast off on an island, by myself. A sentencing to me. There was no one to play with there. Scary nights... (details in upcoming book).




She was a high society opera singer who seemed to go to church almost daily, even at night.


She was fair-skinned, with short-cut baby-fine hair, so she visited the beauty parlor weekly to curl it. She had a double chin, thin nose with flared nostrils. Her reading glasses were a bejeweled cat shape on the outer corners. She was well endowed up-front but her dress flopped-inward behind her. She was always dressed up in perfume, pearls and fancy dresses. Lace and sequins. She wore medium heeled, pointy-toe shoes, with seem-stockings on her slender legs (remember those half stockings that women, with the seam down the back, that were worn with garters)? She had a double chin and a thin nose with flared nostrils. She never left home without her hat, lace gloves and icy-mint candies.

Yes, her fine taste led to the fine china I ate from, everyday.

Yvonne, always sent me to stay with her a while. By the time I was seven, I stayed with her long enough to attend the local school where she lived. Very distressing.




I resented having to get separated from my younger brother though. "Dorrett, come get yourself ready to go spend some time with grandmother." Said my sister.


I would arrive at grand mother's neat, two-room efficiency home. Nice looking, atop a slight hill off the side-walk. with steps leading up to its quaint little porch. She always lived in cottage-like homes. Complete with roses and other flowers adorning the sides of the veranda (porch).



It is not that grandmother, was not nice to me, it was more my separation from Orien, that saddened me, so. On my first stay with her, she made it clear to me where we stood. "Dorrett, you must call me mommy, never grandmother."

My poor appetite grew worse with those visits. Grandmother tried to take good care of me, which I was not accustomed to. Oh boy did she pour on the "Betty"sweet-cream. I remember the picture of a small girls face on the can. Still, I would've been happier with my brother, Orien.



We were off to a bad start from the first visit. When she referred to daddy(her son) as my father, I told her, "He is not my real father." (details in book). I might as well have committed suicide at that moment.


That statement earned me my first beating from her. That was an experience, I will never forget. Each lick indelibly burned into my memory, as it welted my skin. Lash after lash, the searing belt whistled (wiss-wiss!). My wails for mercy went unheeded "I am dead now!" I cried "murder!" I stumbled throughout the tiny apartment with the physical woman towering over my small frame. I was like a drunk trying to gain his stance during a ship-wreck. She was like a monster from a sci-fi, movie. My flailing arms offered no protection from the all-over strikes.



Beating a child in Jamaica, meant that the screaming child was guilty of a wrong-doing. That scouring (beating) was accepted. Afterwards, she prepared and served me a bowl of hot oatmeal (yuck). I had trouble swallowing it, because of the angry lump in my throat, that hurt. Between every gingerly spoonful, I took hiccuped sobs of breath. I was around six years old.

These are just the bones for my upcoming book. Enjoy!

Please, take a moment to tell me how you like this blog.

PRESENTS FROM ABROAD

Momma was the best at caring for us from afar. She worked two jobs to pay for our gifts and still support herself back in England.

She wanted us (not the neighbors), to enjoy the fruits of her labor. However, Yvonne, shared the parcel. Neighbors gathered every time we opened our parcels.

"Vonne, you mumma rich, inna England, look pon de big box!"

Another chimed in, "Mek we see weh she sen fi-u."

Neighbors were free to dip in and help themselves to whatever they wanted, first.

I loved the unusual gifts, like peanut butter! Delicious!

Most importantly, momma sent us basic necessities. Soap-on-a-rope(unusual), among other things we could not purchase in Jamaica. Clothes and shoes. All the things she thought we needed to make life better on a daily basis.

Momma worked hard in England to send her love to us. She even sent us spending money. Don't ask what they did with it or how that was divvied (divided) up. I was just a six year old.

"Dis shoes, nice! ...Lorks-King! ...Vann, gimmie dis, no?"

Anyway, mommy sent smart toys for Orien and me. I received my first baby-doll. It was an arm-full, with sleeping eyes. I named her Baby. She slept safe in my arms the first night. On the big bed in the front room, with Yvonne, Tony and Stafford.

The very next day, one of the neighbors from the yard asked Yvonne to let her little girl borrow my baby. It was returned days later with the head cracked down the center, and the eyes knocking around inside of it. I was hurt.

CONTINUED: NIGHTMARES

NIGHTMARES

My brother and I hated going to sleep during the day, because we enjoyed playing.


But, big sister, Yvonne, always made us take a nap at noon. Right after lunch.

Nap time was essential to keeping order and mellowing us out.


I can remember, one-day when my younger brother, Orien, was shadow boxing. I accidentally walked into his punch as I entered the back door from the dark corridor. My stomach was cramping, as I fell to the floor, doubled over in pain. He was a sturdy boy. Healthy. That was, the first of two times, he received a beating from Yvonne (that I know of). He was lucky.

At six, I watch her wistfully as she did chores. Hoping I would get a chance at that broom. Then one day I got my chance. What a fateful thing. I soon learned why? Explained, when I get to that chapter.

At night we slept in pitch darkness, unless the home had moon-light shining in through the windows. Back then we slept with windows and doors open.

In the middle of the night when it was pitch black, I experienced nightmares that drove me to leave the cot my brother and I *shared. I'd run to join the older siblings on the big bed, in the big front room. Other times, I was too afraid to leave with my body, so I would express from my body and leave the room through *astral or etheric projection. I knew instinctively how to eject when I felt afraid enough. I was innocent, then.

*We slept head and tail-my head by his feet and visa-versa. Otherwise we would not have fit comfortably on the narrow cot.

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astral_projection

MOVING TO A TWO-ROOM HOUSE

Daddy's second of many moves. Was the home next door to the Veranda(front porch) kindergarten. It was not as roomy as the previous one, where momma left us on her way to England. It had a sprawling veranda where we entered a large front room, which led to the second and smaller room, with a back door that opened to a short dark corridor.

The front room was large where we placed daddy's big bed. Yvonne, 17; Tony 16;
and Stafford 15, slept there together, when daddy was not home. As far as I can
remember; it was crowded.

Just outside the back corridor was the entrance on the right to the community kitchen. Next to it, one facility after the other were the shower room, then the wash-room, and so forth, down the line with the toilet room, last.

From these rooms one could enter from the back yard. which was an open-space. You could see the string of connected one-room rented homes across the yard. In the center they were connected by clothes lines. Off to the back was a fenced-in, pet Mule.

This home must have been haunted, because it was there that I experienced fear for the first time. So many nightmares...

WAS IT A GALLOPING MULE, OR WHAT?

Life was sometimes too exciting for us.

Indelibly, printed in our minds were the thunderous gallop of a mule gone wild! He was kept in a fenced-in part of the back property. Beyond our general yard with its clothes lines and so forth. But every so often, we would hear shouts that he was "loose!." Everyone, except the owner, would run inside and slam their doors shut.

Terrified? Yes, we were. It would not be long before the poor creature would be forced back behind his fence again. He looked so bored, as he would just lumber about with his head hung down. Looking back, I feel he needed that periodic escape.

Even back at that tender age of maybe, six, I felt such empathy for animals. I'm sure my kind brother felt the same way too.

MY FIRST VISIT TO A DENTIST

After my father, sister and brothers left for the day. We were on our own as usual.

My tooth hurt so badly, that I walked two doors to the corner from home, where I asked a stranger for directions to the doctor for my tooth ache. "Mr. can you please tell me where to find a doctor for my tooth?" He replied. "You need a dentist. The closest dentist is about a mile from here. You can go left down this road, and when you get to the corner, make a right and go...."

The sun was so hot, there appeared to be water in a distance on the road.
After double checking the directions with a different stranger, I finally made it to the dentist. There was a thick crowd of people on a long line, when I arrived. After I waited for what seemed like all-day, the doctor looked at my teeth and told me to return in the morning, because the clinic was closing.

The following day I returned to find, another thick, long line. When it was my turn, the dentist sat me up on a big black chair and pulled my tooth. He used no Novocaine. It took a while for him to extract the tightly rooted tooth. Then he sent me home with cotton packed in, where the tooth used to be.

A BURNING HUNGER

There is nothing like a burning hunger.

It drove us to risk a terrible beating, if we were ever found out, when our folk got home.

Hunger is a drive that has no shame. It distinguishes neither one from the other.

Sometimes, at the end of a long dusty day of play, we were so hungry. We watched wistfully as Synthia, our teen-aged neighbor washed dishes outside, by her family's pickup truck.

She cleaned her pots and tossed the scrapings(*bun-bun) to wild birds. Until she started giving it to us. We usually ate it, as she did dinner dishes after her parents left for their evening walk.

*Bun-bun was burnt-on scrapings from her pots that were soaking as she cleaned her dishes. Sometimes, she would scrape the burned on rice from inside the bottom of the pot with her hands and give it to us. We gladly ate it, because hunger made it delicious.

What she demanded of us in return for the bun-bun, was......

Synthia's demands will be declared in my upcoming book.

TO SCHOOL OR NOT TO SCHOOL?

I was too young for the school when I was about five yrs. old, but after my incident with the bike, it was OK. So, the teacher who held a front porch kindergarten school next door, must have had a talk with my folk about signing me on.

For a few Shillings(English currency) a week, I was booked into school.

However, my brother was now left alone to his own device. I was just next door. Across the fence on a crowded front porch. I can only surmise, now, that the teacher saw my accident with the bicycle that fateful day we shot across the street in front of its path.

School was very interesting to me. We had to write on a slate with a slate-pencil. Our teacher and her relative were the teacher and head-mistress who controlled everything.

We learned our A B Cs and we counted daily. The Veranda (porch) was packed and energised.

FEAR OF SUCCESS?

I walk with the creator, so I will not be intimidated by the hater who left a negative comment(erased) on my blog. I will continue to write this book through blogging, to its completion.

Thank you for reading my blog.
Dorreth

RUSIAN ROULETTE CROSSING

Our Russian roulette crossing, was fun! Until the day I got hit.

My brother and our neighborhood friends, enjoyed dodging cars, and bicycles. We waited until the vehicle was almost upon us, before darting across its path. I was six years old and my brother was 5. Our friends were roughly the same age. This was one of our regular things to do just for laughs.

As customary, with this sort of fun, there is always one child lagging behind, who gets hit. This time it was me. I felt ashamed as my contemporaries fled the scene. They ran home, and I hurriedly, brushed myself off, and left the scene with my cuts and scrapes. The cyclist, took off.

AUTHOR'S QUOTE:
THINK WELL OF OTHERS AND SPEAK WELL OF OTHERS, or you will be ashamed of your stinking-thinking, and be forced to sign your name as ANONYMOUS. Do unto others, as you would like to be done you.
D. E. Witt