Before I was born or before my mother was born or before you were even born, for that matter, our midwestern American city was a bit of a phenomenon — a miraculous, magical destination renowned for its own brand of life saving. Before the cereal and the cornflakes, a doctor came to Battle Creek from New York City, raised forty children and adopted seven. He opened a holistic sanitarium, a place where rich folks and prominent Americans like Mary Todd Lincoln and Clifford Milburn Holland (the chief engineer of the Holland Tunnel) traveled to engage their dietic concerns and indulge their gastronomic curiosities.

Kellogg’s Toasted Corn Flakes
(Early 20th Century)

Patients at the Sanitarium participated in breathing exercises and mealtime marches to promote the proper digestion of their food. They took classes in food preparation for homemakers and embraced the Sanitarium’s vegetarian, low-fat, low-protein, whole grain, fiber-rich diets. The founder of the Sanitarium also considered enemas to be a very important part of his practice, so patients participated in frequent cleansings, ones in which the doctor plied their bowels with water from above and below with a device that rapidly instilled several gallons of water in them. This was followed by a pint of yogurt — half of which was eaten, half of which was administered by enema, “thus planting the protective germs where they are most needed and may render most effective service,” the doctor claimed. No shit.

This doctor also insisted that sex drained the body of life. He encouraged the application of pure carbolic acid to the female clitoris, claiming it was “an excellent means of allaying the abnormal excitement.”

He believed that masturbation caused womb cancer, nocturnal emissions, urinary diseases, impotence, epilepsy, insanity, mental and physical debility, and that circumcision could remedy the “solitary vice.” And the procedure should be done without administering an anesthetic, “as the brief pain attending the operation would have a salutary effect upon the mind, especially if it be connected with the idea of punishment.” This doctor, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, went on to invent Cornflakes cereal, putting the city of Battle Creek on the map.

My mother gets into the car and Dad backs the Buick out of the driveway. In a tubercular wheeze, our old four-door putters past Kellogg Community College, the sleeping jungle-gyms of Meyer’s Toy World, Farley-Estes Funeral Home and St. Phillip’s Catholic Church. It’s very early in the morning; the city’s sidewalks are still rolled up and the sun has barely shown its face. We enter the ramp of the Penetrator, which merges onto I-94 towards Kalamazoo and the Dad pops a cassette into the tape deck. Inchworm, inchworm, measuring your marigolds. Do you ever stop and think how beautiful they are?

My parents have been waiting a long time to take this drive. The wheels of the whole process started nearly six months ago, perhaps longer. They decided to adopt a baby boy from Poland. There was a woman, an unwed girl in Warsaw, who was expecting her second child, a boy. She had kept her first, but when she became pregnant, accidentally for the second time, the girl’s mother insisted she give him up for adoption because they couldn’t afford to take care of him. The expectant mother was supposed to call my parent’s lawyer when she had a baby, then the little one would join our family. In March, she gave birth, and the lawyer got the phone call.