publishing income. The publisher’s share, equal to that of the writers, would go to Aldon and/or their heirs and assigns. At the time I had no idea what “heirs and assigns” were, but with extensions our agreement with Aldon would come to include all the songs that Gerry and I wrote separately or together from the time we signed with Aldon in 1959 until several years after the release of
Tapestry
in 1971.
We left that meeting feeling as if we had struck gold. To us, $6,000 was a huge sum of money, and that first check for $1,000 did get us out of debt. To Al and Donnie, $6,000 was a relatively small amount to invest in what was then fifty-six years of ownership and/or the right to transfer ownership of the copyright of any song written by Gerry and/or me during the term of the contract.
With our immediate financial concerns alleviated, we focused on the need to find a bigger apartment before the anticipated arrival of our baby in March. We moved to a ground floor two-bedroom apartment on Brown Street between Avenue Z and Voorhies Avenue in Brooklyn. That entire area had been cornfields when I was a child. Now it was filled with attached brick duplex houses in which a family could live on the upper two floors and cover their mortgage by renting out the ground-floor apartment.Gerry pejoratively called the neighborhood a “people farm,” but I was thrilled to be living in four rooms instead of one.
In January 1960, I was a month shy of eighteen. The baby’s due date was approaching, and all I knew about giving birth was that it would be painful. My main source of information was my mother, who was as helpful as she could be considering that her own experience had been limited to two births for which she had been medicated. Her own mother had practiced natural childbirth, though not by choice or name, but childbirth without drugs was no more an option for me in 1960 than it had been for my mother in the 1940s.
“When I was giving birth to you,” she recalled, “the drugs they gave me made me groggy, but they didn’t stop the pain.” She hastened to add, “Don’t feel bad. You were worth it, even if you did elbow me away the first time I held you….” I rolled my eyes and then we both smiled. It wasn’t the first time I had heard that story.
Then her eyes clouded with sadness as she recounted the memory of my brother coming out purple and staying that way for what seemed to her like too long a time before he turned pink. At subsequent doctor visits, when she suspected that Richard had a hearing disability, she was told that his purple color could have been an indicator of oxygen deprivation, which she later came to believe had caused his disabilities.
My mother’s recollections were not giving me a lot of confidence. As an apprehensive seventeen year old undertaking to learn exactly how childbirth worked and how much it would hurt, I wanted my mother to tell me how painless and uncomplicated her experiences had been. At the same time, I was grateful for her counsel. Had one of my daughters become pregnant at seventeen I would have said, “You’re much too young to have a baby!” but then I would have risen to the occasion, as did my mother.
Though Gerry and I had originally planned to wait before having children, Gerry, too, rose to the occasion. When I went into labor, he helped me into the car very carefully and made sure I had everything I would need with me. Because it would be another decade before fathers were invited to participate in deliveries, Gerry was pacing and smoking in the fathers’ waiting room when our daughter Louise Lynn Goffin was born on March 23, 1960. I was allowed to hold Louise for less than a minute before a nurse took her away to clean her up, swaddle her in a pink blanket, and tuck her in a bassinet in the nursery far from her germy mother. Another nurse brought Gerry to the hallway outside the nursery so he could view his new baby through a window. When at last my nurse
Tapestry
in 1971.
We left that meeting feeling as if we had struck gold. To us, $6,000 was a huge sum of money, and that first check for $1,000 did get us out of debt. To Al and Donnie, $6,000 was a relatively small amount to invest in what was then fifty-six years of ownership and/or the right to transfer ownership of the copyright of any song written by Gerry and/or me during the term of the contract.
With our immediate financial concerns alleviated, we focused on the need to find a bigger apartment before the anticipated arrival of our baby in March. We moved to a ground floor two-bedroom apartment on Brown Street between Avenue Z and Voorhies Avenue in Brooklyn. That entire area had been cornfields when I was a child. Now it was filled with attached brick duplex houses in which a family could live on the upper two floors and cover their mortgage by renting out the ground-floor apartment.Gerry pejoratively called the neighborhood a “people farm,” but I was thrilled to be living in four rooms instead of one.
In January 1960, I was a month shy of eighteen. The baby’s due date was approaching, and all I knew about giving birth was that it would be painful. My main source of information was my mother, who was as helpful as she could be considering that her own experience had been limited to two births for which she had been medicated. Her own mother had practiced natural childbirth, though not by choice or name, but childbirth without drugs was no more an option for me in 1960 than it had been for my mother in the 1940s.
“When I was giving birth to you,” she recalled, “the drugs they gave me made me groggy, but they didn’t stop the pain.” She hastened to add, “Don’t feel bad. You were worth it, even if you did elbow me away the first time I held you….” I rolled my eyes and then we both smiled. It wasn’t the first time I had heard that story.
Then her eyes clouded with sadness as she recounted the memory of my brother coming out purple and staying that way for what seemed to her like too long a time before he turned pink. At subsequent doctor visits, when she suspected that Richard had a hearing disability, she was told that his purple color could have been an indicator of oxygen deprivation, which she later came to believe had caused his disabilities.
My mother’s recollections were not giving me a lot of confidence. As an apprehensive seventeen year old undertaking to learn exactly how childbirth worked and how much it would hurt, I wanted my mother to tell me how painless and uncomplicated her experiences had been. At the same time, I was grateful for her counsel. Had one of my daughters become pregnant at seventeen I would have said, “You’re much too young to have a baby!” but then I would have risen to the occasion, as did my mother.
Though Gerry and I had originally planned to wait before having children, Gerry, too, rose to the occasion. When I went into labor, he helped me into the car very carefully and made sure I had everything I would need with me. Because it would be another decade before fathers were invited to participate in deliveries, Gerry was pacing and smoking in the fathers’ waiting room when our daughter Louise Lynn Goffin was born on March 23, 1960. I was allowed to hold Louise for less than a minute before a nurse took her away to clean her up, swaddle her in a pink blanket, and tuck her in a bassinet in the nursery far from her germy mother. Another nurse brought Gerry to the hallway outside the nursery so he could view his new baby through a window. When at last my nurse
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