1965 WELCOME

Wednesday, October 27, 2004: I originally wrote this at xanga and am now moving it over and consolidating it.

INTRO TO BLOG: Welcome to my autobiography. I have decided to try and write the story of my life as a blog. You have found my first entry by clicking welcome. Also read my journal blog, turtle_dove. I have started this new project on my 39th birthday.

INTRO TO AUTOBIO: Well, here we are at the beginning. This is a picture of me at 38 years old. It's also a montage that shows the origins of my face. So it's a good place to start. You see how much I look like my father and my mother, but more than that my maternal grandmother, wow!

So I was born October 27, 1965 (11:07 a.m.), in San Francisco, California. My name was Jane Leu. I was given no middle name. My family name is Swiss and means lion. Later when I married [the first time], I took a middle name and my married name and became Jane Lenorr* Arnell. *light

[I am now married again and took my maiden name back as middle name: Jane Leu Rekas.]

My parents were not married. My mother is Andrea and she was 26 when I was born. She is also writing her own autobiography. My father, Felix Leu, was 21 then. My mother has written her story about their time together.

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT MY BIRTH: My mother tells me that her labor with me was 13 hours. She told me that another woman gave birth in the same room to a child with lots of birth marks. I always wonder where that other baby has grown up and lived their life.

My mom was healthy during her pregnancy with me. She has always told me that she ate well and took vitamins and did not drink or use drugs. I was over 9 lbs. and two weeks late.

I was born in a hospital in San Francisco, CA, which my mother tells me is now a parking lot. We first lived in North Beach for a few months, and then we moved to Haight Ashbury on Downey street. Mother was a flower child, as they say.

 

725 Vallejo is probably above this Asian store.

This is probably the doorway with the security gate, but it's not well marked.

I think my grandmother came down, but I don't think she was there for the birth. I don't know. My father was not, but he saw me within the first month of my life. My parents were separated and in fact never resumed their relationship. Except once when I was two, I never saw them in the same house, state, country or continent.