Providence Chapter 5

We were living in a run down apartment building in Daytona Beach, Florida.  And when I say run down, that is perhaps an understatement.
I was living there with my mate, and I was pregnant.  Not my ideal place to have a baby, living there for me wasn't unpleasant, except when my other half drank hard liquor...some people just can not drink whiskey.  They become quite mean and nasty.  I wonder sometimes if he ever really thought about the things that he did to me when he was drunk out of his mind, especially before I was pregnant.                                        
Back to being pregnant. We arrived in Florida this time with an Austin Healey Sprite Mark 9, cute little car except we had to push it to start it. Oh the joys of being a rebel, I say that with tongue in check.  Well we arrived and were able to find a very "cheap" apartment and we had no more money.  So I was able to get rehired at a restaurant where I had previously worked as a hostess.  I didn't mind working at all, in fact I rather enjoyed it. At this point I was seven months along and thank God, I was in very good health.
If you have ever been poor you may be able to identify with some of this.
We were living in a tiny little apartment, that desperately needed a coat of paint and layers upon layers of dirt removed...which we did....and as we worked I couldn't help but think about where was this baby going to sleep.  How were we going to feed her and take care of her.  And oh yes we knew we were having a girl.  I was thrilled by this prospect, but also scared out of my mind.
I knew how life had been before I was pregnant...being dragged down the street by my hair...that wasn't fun at all.  I can remember making a deal with God. Just let him fall asleep, or pass out.  Please God, I'll quit smoking. (I wasn't pregnant yet.)  What was I thinking making a deal with God?  But he did pass out and we did sleep.  Thank you Jesus and I mean that completely.  I may not have understood all I was doing, but God did.  He had his hand on me.  As the time came closer and closer for me to deliver, we had gotten somethings taken care of, number one being where the baby was going to sleep.  I had an old, antique ring that I traded for a trunk, a flat topped trunk....something like this.

And when this was placed right up along the wall with the lid up and a nice piece of foam covered in a nice snugly fabric, it made the perfect little bed for a new born, And of course I had the lid fixed so it couldn't close and all her little bottles of lotion and bath soaps and ointments and powders, that I thought I needed where all lined up and ready to go...I had picked out a name sometime back...I think it was on a previous trip to sunny Florida we had lived in the very close proximity of a young woman named Johnnie, and I was adamant that should I ever have a daughter I would name her such a name that her nickname was Johnnie.

So my Michael and I spent time trying to conjure up a name, sounds like we were witches, we weren't, that would work...we went thru many ideas and we finally settled on Jonquil.  I thought that this was a name that we had made up, however, I later found out that it was an actual name...but more on that later.
Well March 17th, St Patrick's day arrived as did Jonquil Heather.  What a fuzzy creature she was...and she was beautiful.  I didn't know that babies sometimes arrive with a lot of hair that they usually rub off as the days go by.  Once this occurred her real beauty shone forth.
Now I am not 100% sure what the difficulties may have been in her little system, but we had developed a routine of sorts. For at least a month, Johnnie would eat, throw up, eat, sleep a few hours, poop, and I mean poop, as in projectile poop, and when she eat sometimes we had projectile vomiting,  the pediatricians knew not what to recommend.  Johnnie was gaining weight and we were basically told to keep up what we were doing and maybe watch what I was eating a little more closely.
Okay I was 22, I was with a man seven years my senior, who loved Johnnie completely and I think he loved me as well, although at times I really had a hard time seeing it....like when we sold our little car and he bought silver wire to weave silver rings..The sale of these rings was to pay the rent and buy food...however it went for buying weed...which he was going to bag up and sell, but he ended up smoking most of it himself along with his buddies...not a great picture....

Are you hungry for more of this saga?  Well come on back for the next chapter...