I was conceived on the night of the moon landing. Well, that’s how I tell the story, anyway. Everyone needs a creation myth.

Sometime not long after I fully grasped the birds and the bees, I did the math — poorly (I was born almost precisely eight months after the Eagle landed). When I asked my parents about it, Dad insisted it wasn’t true; he and my mother had been on vacation in Miranda, California along the Avenue of the Giants in the Humboldt Redwoods. Which was certainly romantic enough, unless you considered the other couple sharing the hotel room with them.

That hasn’t stopped us from making comments about rockets and my father “swelled with pride” for his country. We’re always ready in my family with the double entendre.

The story remains a good one, and I still repeat it even if this myth of my provenance is a little dubious. While I cannot confirm its veracity, nor can anyone really disprove it … I was a “surprise” after all, a happy accident (or so they say to my face). The fact I arrived well before the due-date given by the obstetrician helps the story, as well. In 1969, estimating a delivery date was considerably less than a science. And if you figure in the obstetrician himself … well, we’ll get to him.

That possibly fateful vacation would have been a rare occasion when
Mom got a break from two daughters aged 8 and 4, and Dad broke free of
his emotionally and physically grueling schedule as news director for one of San Francisco’s local television stations. For their sake, I certainly hope they got frisky. They deserved it.

My gestation as I imagine it was sort of like a steeplechase for a fetus. Mom and Dad continued to smoke Marlboro Lights and drink several gin and tonics before dinner, as ever. Their first two kids had not shown any outward damage from the time they spent stewing in the same conditions, so why should anything change now?

Mom learned how to drive a stick by trial and error, in our champagne-colored VW Bug on the hills of San Francisco — and on at least one occasion chased the car down a slope to reach in and pull the emergency brake. I
remember the raspberry-colored vinyl seats had millions of tiny holes
in them like acoustic tile, and the whole car smelled like adrenaline.
(Mom also once chased my stroller, with me in it, down an iconically
sloping San Francisco sidewalk. I like to think I was sort of a
stuntman by proxy while Mom carried me, and into my early infancy.)

Not only was there far less of the obsessive health-consciousness that
pervades modern mother-to-be-hood, but also — in my mother’s case at
least — far less urgency. On the morning of March 19, 1970 my father
had gone into work early was his custom in those days (the Vietnam
War, the degeneration of the Haight Ashbury from love-central to
drug-central, and the Zodiac Killer kept him in the newsroom more
often than not). Mom piled my sisters into the Bug and set off on the
day’s errands, stopping to drop the eldest, Marian, at elementary
school in the West Portal neighborhood. Reliably punctual as ever, Mom arrived at her obstetrician’s office for her check-up before the doctor had even arrived.

She describes him as a bon-vivant, all silver-haired combover and
cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, a booming voice that
reverberated around the thin office walls. Breathless and late, he
glided into the room where my mother waited. “Let’s have a look-see!”
he thundered, ash trickling down the lapel of his white coat. His eyes
widened as he peered between the stirrups. “Mrs. Biggs, I can see a
foot.”

Now, one might expect a Grey’s Anatomy scenario here, orderlies
wheeling up with a stretcher, nurses comforting 4-year-old Kate as her
mother is whisked away amidst a cacophony of whirring, beeping
machines. Breech birth! Possible umbilical complications! Oxygen
deprivation! Instead, my mother calmly explained to her doctor that
she had a number of library books to return, and was not about to pay
the nickel late fee.

To the doctor’s dismay, my mother put her clothes back on, swept up little
Katie, and drove away. The books, I am happy to report, were returned
on time, and my mother remains to this day a library patron in good
standing.

Mom returned home, called my father, and packed a bag. Two hours
later, they arrived at French Hospital on Geary Boulevard out in the
fog belt. The staff, needless to say, had been waiting.

The doctor, perhaps somewhat rattled by Mom’s disappearing act, wasn’t
taking any chances. He simply reached in and grabbed one foot, then
the other, and yanked. (Four foot surgeries later I still curse him
for it.) Almost 9 months to the day after the Eagle landed, I landed.

With that sort of propitious a beginning, it’s little wonder I’ve
turned out to be chronically punctual and hyper-responsible about
library penalties. But I’ve paid my dues for being a native of this
strange, beautiful city, introduced so unceremoniously in an
especially troubled time.

The funny-bizarre tale of my conception and birth would auger an
interesting decade for my city and my family alike. The first printed
words I’d ever read aloud were in the San Francisco Chronicle
headline, “Ford Shot At; Woman is Held.” That night, our neighbor
would set our house on fire, and eventually end up in San Quentin. I’d
ride on the first BART train to travel underneath the San Francisco
Bay. I’d have my first large-scale experience of death when footage
aired of the Jonestown Massacre. I’d be allowed to stay up past
midnight one night in 1978 to watch a candlelight vigil in front of
City Hall as we mourned Harvey Milk and George Moscone.

But 45 years since my zygote period, I still look up at the moon
rising over Twin Peaks and imagine my parents’ heads similarly craned
with a thrill those decades ago, their arms around each others’
waists, friskiness on their minds. They were still innocent then. Life
would get weird soon enough.

Next … Alcatraz, Black Panthers, and a City on Fire