Better than Nice‪!‬

I am an Inupiat Eskimo, but claim several other ethnic heritages from my mother and father.

I was born in a Holy tent in Elim’s fish camp, at Moses Point. Or so I thought until my mom corrected me some 14 years later. When I asked about my birth one day, she said, when she could speak after practically rolling on the floor in laughter, “No, Sonya, our tent wasn’t Holy, it had holes in it!” If you knew me then, you could imagine my disappointment. I was nearly crushed, and mortified at the same time to think I had been so special as to be born in a Holy tent.

My maternal grandmother, Louisa, a lay midwife, delivered me at 2:30 a.m. after my mother demanded my father to leave the tent. However, when he was allowed back into the tent after my birth, Mom says our bond was immediate and strong.

I think, knowing my grandma was a midwife gave me a great interest in the birthing process, and later, maternity nursing. I actually had wanted to be a missionary doctor in India, where several of my paternal grandfathers were born and lived. I became an RN eventually, and the majority of my nursing career was spent in the labor and delivery room. Now, since I retired from nursing in 2013, I have begun in earnest, to pursue my other loves, writing.