(I must now recap the posts that I started on my old blog. It was not meant to be as personal as it had become with the Ameri accounts.)
Here is the first Ameri post.
Ameri: A Throw Away Child
Ameri is Born and Reborn
I have two daughters. One daughter came into the world within a marriage and she had the benefit of two loving parents. She was the first born grandchild of two combined whole families in which there were five aunts, four grandparents and five living great grandparents. She grew into a fine adult. She was an outstanding student all through grade school and high school. She became an outstanding track athlete. She brought the first state champion honors to her high school. She was recruited heavily by all the big name schools seeking women athletes. She chose one that seemed like a good fit, but after the first year she had topped out as an athlete. She was the president of her pledge. She was sought after socially. She was far ahead of the academics of her freshmen offerings. She chose to change schools after completing her spring term. She chose to attend a school with rigorous academic standards and she also chose to become a walk-on candidate for the track team. She had no scholarship money of any kind. She chose the school because of the reputation of the coach and the scholastic demands. She eventually graduated with honors and NCAA titles. She is now making her way in a very competitive world, in a very competitive city, and she is standing solidly on her own two feet. Let us call her, Nike (Νικη). That would be pronounced knee-kay. The shoe company pronunciation not withstanding.
My second daughter, let's call her America or Ameri for short, was the second born child of a woman, we will call her Avril, who had not known the security of a stable home or loving parents for most of her life. That woman had been born to a woman who had grown up under conditions that were equally barren of love and stability. My daughter, Ameri, was the only living child of that unfortunate mother, Avril. Her first child was dead at birth. Ameri is then an only child. Ameri has no father of record. Ameri and her mother were released from the hospital and sent home. Her first home was a shared room with another man and woman who were in Ameri's mother's drug and alcohol crowd. That situation broke down early on and the trail from there leads from one shared accommodation to another that included various hotels and flop houses. At the end of about three months of that existence, Ameri was returned to the hospital where she was born. Avril disappears.
Ameri's physical condition, when she was brought back to the hospital, was not good. She was underweight for her age, twelve pounds at 90 days. She was covered in scabs and her genitals were swollen and traumatized by either severe diaper rash or frictional abuse. She was dehydrated near to the point of dry. Her brain activity was more of a scratchy impression of seizure than any other way to describe it. She was near death. From that point, until Ameri was released from the hospital three weeks later. A seeming miracle has occurred. Tiny Ameri was brought back from near death to being, instead of a functioning three month old infant, for all practical purposes a new born. She weighed just over fifteen pounds. Her stretched out body length was just over fourteen inches. That she recovered at all was seen as a major event by the hospital staff and that she seemed to respond with the minimum capabilities of a new born was seen as a further remarkable event by the hospital staff. Since Avril, Ameri's mom, has disappeared, it is now necessary for Avril's mother, Ameri's grandmother, to take custody when Ameri is released from the hospital after a three week stay. We shall call Ameri's grandmother, Lilya. Lilya takes Ameri home to an apartment she shares with her current boyfriend. The boy friend's name does not matter because he is one of many.
This part of the story ends. Ameri is alive. She starts life again with Grandmother, Lilya.
