# Mykal's Story

This is a story that could very well have happened, as the boy in the story is my oldest son, and the first set of his foster parents were my first wife’s cousin and his wife. The second set of foster parents are living in a state near New York, and the foster mother might possibly, (probably) be much wiser than me. This story is a salute to my eldest son’s memory, as it is something he would have enjoyed reading, especially as much of what I write actually happened, or was dreamed of by him. I know this because eight years ago, after twenty-five long years of separation, we found each other once again. We sat and talked for hours, trying in vain to fill the intervening years with each other’s history. He told me a lot of the escapades and adventures he was involved in as a small child, until he reached the age of majority. This is not child pornography! if that is what you are looking for, please......unkindly remove yourself from the vicinity of what I have left of my eldest son!!!

MYKAL JAN KENNAN(pseudonym) 12/24/60 TO 12/24/99 The boy, a true diaperboy/diaper lover, died on his thirty-ninth birthday. Never had a serious illness in his life until his first and last. Having been feeling a little under the weather for about three days, he mentioned it to his girl-friend,(mommy), who asked him why not go to the Veteran’s Hospital the next day with her Dad and get it checked out. Jan and his girl-friend’s father set out a little earlier than they would have if he’d been alone, because he wanted to see that Jan got started right and got an appointment for that day so that they wouldn’t have to stay over until the next day. By evening they found that Jan had a massive growth in his body, and they couldn’t get his heart rate down under one hundred thirty. They took some biopsies of some unusual growths in his body and one on his heart. The next morning they told him he’d be going home in a couple of hours. At six o-clock in the evening, they called his foster Mom and asked if they could put him on life-support, as he was sinking fast. She gave them permission, and then called my youngest son to tell him what was happening. He turned around and called me to let me know what was taking place. I immediately knew that I was in terrible danger of losing my eldest son, again!!!!! Twenty minutes later, came the dreaded phone call, "Dad?" "Yes Son." "Jan’s dead!!!!!!!! They were prepping him for life support, and his heart just stopped beating, and they were never able to get another beat out of it!!!!"

TO YOU MY SON. I KNOW YOU WOULD ENJOY THIS STORY, AND I HOPE SOMEDAY YOU WILL CONSIDER THE THINGS THAT KEPT US SEPARATED, AND COME TO REALIZE THAT I HAD NO KNOWLEDGE OF WHAT WAS TO HAPPEN TO YOU FOR TWENTY-FIVE YEARS, OR BIG STEPS WOULD HAVE BEEN TAKEN IN ADVANCE TO PREVENT IT! I LOVE YOU SON, AND PRAY THAT YOUR HAVING A GOOD TIME IN THE BIG NURSERY OF YOUR DREAMS, AND LET THE WARMTH OF THE HEREAFTER, WARM THE COLD, DRAFTY CORNERS OF YOUR EARTHLY LONELINESS. SO LONG SON.

I was born on Christmas eve, nineteen-sixty! What a rip! My birthday on Christmas eve. I have nothing much more than a haze of memory of my babyhood until my brother was born almost exactly one and a half years later. I had never even entertained the thought that some misty day in the future, I would stop the routine of having Mamma change my diapers, spend special time with me, cover my diaper area with the baby oil and sweet smelling baby lotion and powder and of course, letting me snuggle into her breast when she was sitting in the old wooden rocker that was always in my room. She’d rock with me with my baba and I’d fall asleep. I always wondered how she would be right under me when I fell asleep, and I’d wake up in my crib. How did she do that, I’d wonder as I woke to a cold wet, and often cold, wet and messy diaper. The sheet of my crib would be wet and cold too. They didn’t always make those plastic pants very well, and Mamma must have gotten a bunch of them that leaked, so I’d wake up cold, wet, uncomfortable and cranky, which usually got me a swat on my well diapered, but wet bottom. I remember that I liked to get up on my hands and knees and rock forward and back until the crib was banging into the wall, but I can’t remember why.

When brother Roy was born, he suddenly got all the attention, and Mamma didn’t rock me to sleep any more. I felt like I was being cheated, not realizing that Mamma was ill, and didn’t always have much energy left over to pay any special attention to me, other than put me on a potty chair, and make me sit there until I did something in it like a little pee, or poop, or both. Since she did pay attention to me when I was on the potty, and always praised me when I left a deposit, some times hugging me real big, I found a way to get attention away from my little brother. The high praises and attention stopped as soon as Mamma and Daddy figured that I was potty trained, at least in the daytime. Then I was puzzled. They were obviously happy that I was, "potty trained", but it began to be that it was old hat and not worth praising me over any more, and "all" the attention shifted back to Roy once again. When I was nearly two, and Roy was six months old, I started not caring if I went in the potty or not, and began wetting and messing in my pants again. Mamma and Daddy paddled my little bum, daily, but kept me in training pants without plastic or rubber pants. Since I didn’t get much attention except when I peed, or pooped my pants, the "Accidents" stopped being accidents, and I was nearly unable to sit comfortably for having my bum blistered, Mamma got even more run down, tired, cranky, and didn’t move around very much. She started getting us up, putting us right at the breakfast table, before cleaning us up and changing us out of our diapers and Roy back in diapers, and me in my training pants. Daddy would kiss us all, and then leave to go to work. We lived on the south-side Chicago, and Daddy worked just a few blocks from the loop. It sometimes took him three hours to get to work and three days to get back home at night, we didn’t see him for very long in any given day. Mamma would make us eat and then put us down to play, again without changing us. Roy and me would just crawl(Roy) or run around in our diapers(usually wet and all ready messed from over-night) all day, until Daddy got home from work. He was spending long hours just to keep us housed, clothed and fed. One day he came home and started shouting at Mamma who had sat all day eating sugar water or candy, and had her nose firmly planted in front of this box that had people moving around and talking to each other. I found out later that it was a black and white TV. Daddy got real mad! He tripped over this long green thing that I was given as a toy. I played with it only because it made a strange mechanical noise when ever you pushed back a little lever that was protected by another loop of plastic material. Any way Daddy tripped on it and nearly fell into our apartment. When he caught his balance, he picked up the thing, I found out later that it was a toy machine gun that some kid threw away by giving it to me, put his lunch box down and grabbed the toy with both hands, and slammed the thing across his raised knee, breaking it into many small plastic pieces. He hollered at me, since Roy was still in the baby talk stage, "If I ever come home again and trip over your toys laying all over the apartment, i’ll throw them away too." I started crying, and hurrying to pick up all the toys, as Daddy noticed Mamma still sitting glued to the old black and white TV, and still in her house dress, having done nothing all day but sit there drinking sugar water, and both of us kids still very wet, and dripping poop down our legs from over filled night diapers. I didn’t understand him very well, so I don’t know just exactly what he said to Mamma. I found out later that Mamma was only nineteen or twenty years old at the time. I was born when she was seventeen years old. For our family, it was a luxury to even have a black and white TV. Color TV was available, but was very expensive, and we had to have rabbit ear antennas in the heart of Chicago, cable TV not a reality yet. Mamma was raised most of her life on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, in South Dakota. Her Grandparents ran the little Trading Post, Post Office, and Gas Station there, and nothing around for miles around except her Uncles big ranch, and the headquarters for that was twenty miles away. Mamma missed out of nearly everything except the radio when she lived there with her Mamma and Grandparents. I think Mamma wasn’t feeling well, being the first time she was away from either her Mom, Grandparents and her Dad. She was trying to feel better by drinking the drink her Mamma used to make for her, and lose herself in the wonder of television. It was not a comfortable evening, especially when our Land-Lady called to ask what that horrible stench was that wafted down the back stairs to her porch landing, and Daddy found a huge pile of our wet and poopy diapers, that Mamma had thrown there while it was frozen outside, meaning to get to soaking them clean of any fecal matter, and in the wash,------Tomorrow. But tomorrow came up and hit her and our Landlady right in the nose, since it had gotten quite warm outside that day, and the diapers thawed and began to stink. I found a lot of this out from going back and talking to all involved, except my Daddy. I was finally able to get the reality from my Dad some years later.

That was the first memory I have that is crystal clear, and strangely, from there on my memory is quite clear. Oh, I have to have something jog my memory once in a while, but it’s still clear after that kick start.

Mamma was taken to see her Daddy, on the other side of Chicago, that evening by Daddy, and the Land-Lady’s oldest daughter baby-sat us. She gave us each a bath, and treated us both the same, although she actually talked sensible talk to me. Well, baby talk, but baby talk that I understood, while "Bubby" would make noises and reach, or point, and Diana couldn’t understand him. I did understand most of his talk, but it took work. She took Bubby out of the bathroom, and into our nursery, and finished drying his hair and calming him down. Bubby is scared witless if any water hits him above the chin, and is a screaming terror if he gets his hair wet. He had a condition in his scalp that someone called ‘Cradle Cap’, I didn’t know what that was, but I know he had a lot of scabs of some kind on his scalp. Diana worked for a while getting as much of it cleaned off his head as possible, and I think the entire neighborhood thought he was being skinned alive. She got him calmed down, treated the sores on his head, and the sores on his bum and between his legs from a bad case of diaper rash, gave him a warm ba-ba and I could here him way down the hallway, just a burbling some kind of nonsense while nursing his ba-ba.

She came back for me now, and the water was getting kind of cool, so I was glad to be lifted out of the old claw foot bathtub, and be toweled dry all over, including my hair. She told me to go quick and get on the changing mat before I got cold. I ran real fast, I thought, but when I got there and turned around, I almost ran into her knees. How’d she get there that fast, I was running almost flat out, and she was right behind me. She was busy getting my diapering supplies,(they were kept separate from Roy’s diapering stuff) and some brand new big, fluffy, white and thick diapers. I was mesmerized. I’d never seen such big fluffy diapers before. I was getting excited, which puzzled my young mind. Why should seeing the new diapers excite me so? I’ve been wearing diapers nearly my entire life,(a whole three years). I winced as I automatically raised my bum so she could get the two new diapers under it, and raised my legs, wincing once again. I was tingling, burning sore, over almost my entire diaper area. Dianna was quite upset, and told me to stay right where I was ‘til she got back. I don’t think I could have gone any where any way, she had routinely strapped me down to the changing table. I heard her dialing the phone. She said, "Mom? I’m right in the middle of putting Jan into his new diapers but," She started crying. "He’s got the worst diaper rash I’ve ever seen, and it hurts him so bad that just raising his legs from the changing table makes him wince with pain. Have we got anything that we can use tonight to heal it, or at least begin healing it?" She went quiet for a few seconds, sniffing and blowing her nose. Then, "Okay Mom. Please have Chris hurry, I can throw a little blanket over him for a while to help keep him warm. I’ll stay with him so he won’t get scared. In fact, I think I’ll just turn him onto his tummy and let the air start the healing process, Please hurry!" She did as she had told her Mamma she’d do and turned me over on my tummy. I said, "What are you doing?" She proceeded to tell me the same sorry she told her Mom, about letting the air help to dry and heal the sores. When she turned me though, it hurt real bad and I screamed and stated to bawl. She took me in her arms, carefully, and stuck a warn ba-ba in my mouth, which at first, I spit out. "That’s Roy’s! I not a baby!" She told me that not only infants drink from the ba-ba, many older babies and toddlers use them too. I noticed that it seemed the ba-ba was bigger than Roy’s, and the nipple too as I opened my mouth and accepted the nipple. I would have been in baby heaven, had I been diapered, accept for my sore bum. I was just drifting off to sleep when Chris knocked on the front door, opened it and shouted, "Hello, anybody home?" He walked in as Dianna said, "Come on back to the nursery Chris." I liked Chris, he was, I found out later, an 11-year old, and he wore diapers. All the Time!! A phrase not used back then, 24/7. He came in and handed Dianna a tube, plastic bottle of medicated baby powder, and a huge pacifier. I had immediately dropped the ba-ba, when I heard someone rap on the door. I had been punished for taking Roy’s and finishing it when Roy would fall asleep. The punishment was severe enough that I knew I didn’t want any more of it. Before I could grab up my ba-ba, Cris stuck the pacifier in my mouth. It wasn’t as huge as it looked when he was fiddling around with the package to get it out, and I loved it. That, my ba-ba, the soothing of the sores on my bum by the ointment he’d brought and the sweet smell of and cool touch of a large dusting of baby powder which she smoothed into every crevice, before she pulled the big diapers up between my legs, fastening the securely with four new diaper pins. Then Dianna got up, picked me up and transferred me to my old crib instead of my youth bed. I complained, even though I kinda liked to sleep in the crib better than the bed, but I wasn’t ready to say that out loud, not wanting the night to end. It didn’t, end that is, for a while.

I don’t remember a lot more of that night except, I woke up hearing Daddy’s key chain rattle as he opened the front door, and Dianna’s voice as she was telling Daddy what she had done for us boys, and that we were calm and asleep. I heard him tell Dianna that Mamma was in the hospital for observation and possible ______and__________ . I found out later that it was a D&C . Mammy had had a mis-carriage, and had lost a lot of blood, and was still bleeding. She would be in the hospital for at least a week. Daddy asked Dianna to baby-sit every afternoon and evening, and Daddy’s friend’s wife would baby-sit during the day. They were right by our nursery door, and I acted like I was still asleep, and worrying what Daddy’d do if he saw my ba-ba, paci, diapers and that I was in the crib. He did see it, and said to the girl that he was glad that she’d gone ahead and started treating me like a baby again. That it was obvious to him now, that I hadn’t been ready to be potty trained, and hoped that the night’s turmoil had really scared me and Roy. When I realized I wouldn’t be punished for it, I really relaxed and suddenly felt a gush of warmth spreading out in my diapers, yet my crib was dry. I was back in that baby heaven. A few weeks later, after Mammy came home, there was a big turmoil in our second floor flat. Things were being removed from their customary positions and put into cardboard boxes. Inside of three days we were all in the car and headed back to South Dakota, as Mammy’s mother lived their. Daddy was sad, he said. he said that it would be hard for us to live back there mostly because there weren’t many jobs available, and the ones that *were*, didn’t pay very well. We drove straight through, even though Mammy didn’t drive. Daddy said once that it wouldn’t cost us as much if we drove straight through.

Mammy wasn’t very pleased that I was back to being a baby again, as it created more work for her. Daddy tried to explain that diapers and a dry bed, or pants, meant she didn’t have near the bed clothes to wash. But Mammy didn’t want to hear it. They had a very noisy argument that scared both Roy and me, and we responded as any baby would.,,,,,We cried...........loudly!!!!!!

Mammy and Daddy got us an apartment within walking distance of Mammy’s Mama, and Daddy got a job at a local pre-fab plant, making pre-fabricated homes to be erected at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Things seemed to slow down for a while. Nearly every day Mammy and Roy and me went to Gram’s house. (an old trailerhouse) Every day, after we got to Gram’s house, Mama and Gram removed my diaper and put me in training pants and shorts. Every day I protested very loudly, that I wanted my diapers. They’d make me sit on the potty chair for a long time, and I’d hold it if at all possible. Then they pulled up my trainers and shorts, and I’d almost immediately wet and mess in them, get another spanking, and be put back in my diapers.

It was now fall again, and the leaves were dropping. Mama’s brothers were starting school the day after Uncle Walter’s and my Daddy’s birthday. I was feeling a lot of tension again around the apartment and Gram’s place. There was a pile in the closet, of our soiled diapers again, and Daddy had found it. The day of their birthday party, the air was fully charged with anger, betrayal, love and hate, and disbelief, as Mama told Daddy she didn’t want to see him any more and would be filing for a divorce. Mammy took us home that afternoon, locked the doors and lay down on their bed and cried. Me and Roy just quietly played in a corner. My plastic pants must have had a hole in them, as did Roy’s. after playing a while, we were playing in a slowly spreading yellow puddle. Roy had done a poopoo in his diaper, and I was getting ready to unload, just as Mama got up and got the mop. I don’t know yet why she didn’t take us in the bathroom and set us in the tub. It was a very small apartment, and the puddle wouldn’t spread if we were in the tub and she could clean up, then change us. But she didn’t. She finally picked him up and began to change him when my bowels decided to empty, and my bladder decided to follow suit. Mama went mad, I think. She grabbed an old belt of Daddy’s and whipped me with it. I never knew anything could hurt so bad. Afterward, when I had calmed down and we both had a bath and clean diapers, we went back over to Gram’s. Gram put down a plastic sheet in the tiny spare room, and bedded us down for the night. She told Mama to let me have my ba-ba and paci, and that she thought that Mama’s cousin and her husband would be more than happy to have a little boy. (WHOA) What is going on now? Well I didn’t really understand, but I’d find out.

I never *saw* Daddy again, while I was a child, except briefly one day a couple of months later, but I’m sure that these early incidents contributed to my becoming a diaper boy and diaper lover. A couple of months later, Nov. 22nd to be exact, Mama left us off with Gram again. I was getting a blistered bum just about every day again, because of my wetting and messing. Roy had started talking, not a very big vocabulary, but talking. Mama left all dressed up, and we went to sleep. We never saw our Mama again. A couple of days later, we were rushed awake, changed, a bottle stuck in our faces and rushed out to a running car, covered with a blanket. The car took off, and we never saw Gram’s house again. A few hours and we were back at Mama’s grandmas house. Two days later, Daddy showed up with one of Mama and Daddy’s friends. I was busy playing on Paw-Paw’s lap in the kitchen, and was being kept from going into the Posts store section where I heard my Daddy’s voice coming from. I squirmed, and fussed, and finally broke loose as I noticed that Roy was missing, and ran out there as fast as I could. Daddy was just beginning to stand up, having changed Roy’s clothes and was picking him up as he turned towards the door. I went running across the ancient boards in the old Trading Post, slamming into and grabbing both his legs at once. Suddenly I knew that Daddy was leaving and taking Roy with him. Suddenly I lost all control(what little I had) and flooded and filled my pants right there. I got Daddy’s foot wet.

He bent back down as he handed Roy to his friend, and picked me up, wet, soiled pants and all, and kissed me as all I could say was, "Daddy I want to go too! Daddy, I want to go too!!!!! Thru my tears and sobs, I noted that Daddy was crying to, as he told me, "Son, if I could you’d be going with me now too, but I can’t, I just can’t. I could only get the law to release Roy to me. Daddy, I want to go to!! As he put me down on my feet, I crumpled into a heap right there on the floor, hearing the finality of his voice as he says, "I’m sorry son, You can’t." I could hear the deep torment on his soul as he said that, and then he was gone.

This is part 1 of a fictionalized account of my son’s life. I’ll be writing other installments till we have a thirty-nine year history of his shortened life.