Rubber Dolls Part I: Early Days

I haven't written a lot about my growing up years in Louisville, other than a piece a few years ago about our family history with the Kentucky Derby. However, my sister and I collaborated on a draft memoir a few years ago that is about her life as a person living with bipolar, and my role as a family member. It's on hold now, but I want to share a preview of our story, which I'll post in four parts. This is the first.

My sister Mila is eleven months older than me, but we were about the same size as young girls growing up in Louisville, so it wasn’t unusual to be asked if we were twins. As preteens, our acrobatic ballet teacher introduced us as The Rubber Dolls when we performed onstage for holiday and hospital shows around town. Adding to the good times of our youth were festive gatherings with extended family at our grandparents’ house, blocks from Churchill Downs. The annual Kentucky Derby party was one of the highlights as we watched racegoers parade on sidewalks and cars crawl along the parkway from our seats on the front porch swing. 

Vicki (left) and Mila

The joyful memories of those early days were disrupted, however, when an unwelcome guest entered our world and never left. Mila was in the tenth grade and I was in the ninth as we sat at the kitchen table for a snack of cookies and milk with our mother, and my sister’s eyes glazed over in panic. She relayed a story about a boy at school who’d chased her with a knife, forcing her to run outside and hide. Then her eyes darted toward the window, and she pointed to a truck rolling down the street, urgently warning us that the men inside were government agents searching for her. The terror etched in her face was that of a mad woman. Chills rippled over my skin. 

The hallucinations and delusions haunting Mila were a preview of coming attractions, a serious illness that led to months of severe depression. I was the bolder of the two of us, but the chain of events unfolding before my eyes rendered me helpless, my emotions swaying between grief, compassion, and fear. My parents’ reactions, heightened anxiety one moment, reassurance the next, added to my feeling of doom and despair.

Schizophrenia was the initial diagnosis, but there were no voices, so manic depression, now known as bipolar illness, was the one that stuck. It was Type I, which means the onset was in youth (like Type I diabetes). Despite lifelong medication and weekly therapy, the illness would cycle into periodic psychotic breakdowns, which meant family support during Mila’s early career in Louisville, and much more support from me and my family when we both moved west. The roller coaster of this brain disorder would offer few thrills and ample sideshows.

But like the Rubber Doll of her youth, Mila always bounced back, time after time, fortunate to achieve a life that’s been both tragic and full. By the time she moved to her “city by the sea,” she’d already secured impressive jobs with Naval Intelligence and Social Security Appeals judges. Additional positions would include work with more Social Security judges, patent attorneys, and the Real Estate Office at City Hall; and producing a Youth Government Day with Mayor Diane Feinstein for the San Francisco Jaycees.

To be continued: Life in California