Posts Tagged ‘Caul’

Posts Tagged ‘Caul’


“Gee Robyn, you sure spend a lot of money on therapy…”

5.15.2010 | 4 Comments

Today… is my birthday.

Now, before you get all giddy and start your ‘whoop-whoop!’ing, I’d like to take this moment to honour my mother. Each year on my birthday, she revels in telling me all about my birth, and how horrendous it was.

First of all, of my two older brothers and I, I was the one that put my mother through her longest labour. She went to the hospital at about 3am on May 15th, and endured labour like a champ for an entire… three hours. Can you believe it? I mean, really – three hours! How did she ever get through it?!

I do enjoy teasing my mother about this because really, every single birth story I have ever heard relates labour being in the 15 – 60 hour (I’m not kidding am I, Caieta?) range. My mother enjoys then emphatically countering with, “I had your brother after only TWO CONTRACTIONS!”

Yah, yah… whatever mom. Now you’re just making stuff up.

Then she likes to tell me that when I was born, she thought she “had given birth to a slug”. Here, she likes to refer to the miracle of my entry into this world as “gross”, “disgusting”, and “horrible”. This was because I was born ‘In the Caul’. That means that the amniotic sac was still intact as mom squished my skull toward the light of day. (It’s a good thing that the movie “Alien” hadn’t come out yet, or that would have been one panicked delivery room.)

And now, I get to the best part of my birth story…

Y’see, I have a lot of little ‘beauty marks’ on my skin. A lot of people have them (in fact, my friend Eran and I have identical ones on our left feet!), and they don’t bother me at all. Well… they shouldn’t bother me, anyway. But they totally do bother me, thanks to my GENIUS mother who found the absolute best way to warp and humiliate me at the same time.

As a young, impressionable child, I innocently asked my mom about my beauty marks one day. She looked down at her precious daughter, smiled sweetly as only a mother can, and said that I had so many beauty marks because I came out of her butt.

So yes,  according to my mother, I was born a butt-slug.  Apparently not my finest moment.

HOWEVER… there is one thing that my mother tells me about my birth that doesn’t actually send me over the edge: she tells me that she knew right away that I was something special. And she knew in some way that I would be a different type of person, someone who was meant for great things. (She assures me that she did not have an epidural, so it wasn’t the drugs talking or anything.) Now, she never really told me any of this until about a year ago. I grew up sound in the knowledge that I was not a precious snowflake, nor was I the only child on the planet. I was taught that I was to be nice to other people, because I was other people. Sure, I was individual, but that didn’t mean I had the right to pronounce that I was better than someone else.

Since I was a kid, I have felt that I was meant for something big. Something extraordinary. Something important. I’d be happy, I’d be content, and I would be so because I capitalize on whatever it is that’s inside me. My heart, my mind, my passion… maybe my drive, my knowledge, or my talent…

I have instinctively known that somehow, someway, I’d be living a life where I knew that all my dreams could come true if only I asked them to.

…and today, on my 34th birthday, when I stopped to think about it, I remembered that I was born at 6:49 in the morning.

I’d already won the lotto before I took my first breath.

Thanks, mom.

You may now commence your ‘Whoop-Whoop!’ing.

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WRF!? (Getting to knooooooow me…)

3.02.2010 | 0 Comments

Weird Robyn Facts

I was born “in the caul”. According to myth, this is a sign of good luck, and apparently I am destined for greatness. I am also immune to drowning, have a fairy accompanying me wherever I go, have the power to read palms, and can see into the future. It is also a sign that I may become a vampire.

I had my collar bone broken when I was a kid after SOMEONE tossed me under a spinning merry-go-round. Of course, I had just smacked that someone in the face with a tree branch, so I guess I got what I deserved. Sorry Steven.

I foster Border Collies for the That’ll Do Border Collie Rescue. Errr… well, I did. I keep adopting my foster dogs, so I kind of ran out of room. (But if YOU want to foster Border Collies, click HERE for more info) .

I cannot even THINK about the movie Spirit: Stallion of the Cimmaron without tearing up. A “friend” of mine used to sneakily play the trailer just to see me cry. I CAN’T HELP IT! That poor horse… all tied up… and… and… *sniff*… oh god. I am really, really hoping that when I go on a safari in Tanzania that I don’t witness a lion mauling a zebra or something.

You know that sound when you remove the lid from a piece of unglazed pottery? Yah, I hate that sound. A lot. You know what kind of sounds like that? Walking on scree. Thaaaaat’s right. I get to climb an Unglazed Pottery sounding scree slope on Kili.

Greeeeeeat.

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