Free Love, Ellen: A Mother/Daughter Journey by Betty DeGeneres

the way home.
    “No advance warning?” she said, livid. “How could you just surprise me like that?” And she went on.
    The next day, still seeming out of sorts, she got busy helping with the housework. When she figured out some gadget that wasn’t working properly, I offered, “I think you’re very smart.”
    “Well, I don’t think you are,” she shot back.
    This wasn’t the best way to begin this pregnancy that I so wanted. But I was too happy to let her get me down for long.
    Of course, once Ellen bounced into our world, Mumsy adored her, just as she did her first grandchild. Vance and El were the light of her life.
    Though we told Vance that he was going to have a brother or sister, we gave him no explanation about the pregnancy or where the baby would come from. Then one day, close to my due date, when I asked him to do something that he didn’t want to do, his answer was, “No, Mrs. Fat Tummy.” Did we think he wouldn’t notice?
    I was so huge, in fact, that Elliott’s mother later said she didn’t know how I could go outside.
    Vance had come early, but Ellen was two weeks late. Finally, one Sunday morning after a big breakfast, the pains started and my water broke. When we got to the hospital—Ochsner Foundation Hospital in Jefferson Parish—the nurses weren’t happy to hear about the amount of food I had eaten.
    In the meantime, hearing the news, Mother and Daddy rushed to the hospital to be with us. But Elliott met them downstairs and asked them to wait there until he called them. Mother later told me Elliott’s coat pockets were bulging with Christian Science literature. We did pray without ceasing.
    And so God answered that day, January 26, 1958, when Ellen Lee DeGeneres was born. She weighed a whopping nine pounds, thirteen ounces. The birth was not difficult. They held her up immediately for me to see, and I just had an impression of a beautiful little blob of fatness. Later, when relatives gathered to look through the glass at the babies in the nursery, they overheard a man point to Ellen and say, “Look at that one—he’s going to be a loot-ball player.”
    Mom corrected him indignantly, “That’s a girl.”
    Ellen was a placid, happy baby from the start—and a pretty, chubby, cuddly, blond little toddler whose piercing blue eyes always seemed older than their years. They could twinkle mischievously one moment and fill with sensitive tears the next. As a little girl, she adored two things above all else: her baby dolls and her big brother, Vance.
    As she shed her baby fat, Ellen stretched into a thin, lanky tomboyish, active, fun-loving girl, fairly athletic (like Vance, who was extremely athletic). I encouraged her to take ballet, but she wasn’t a bit interested. Still, that man was wrong about football—she wasn’t interested in that either.
    Many years later, a good while after she came out to me as a lesbian, Ellen still couldn’t understand that I’d had no inkling beforehand. She would point to pictures of herself in ties and short pixie haircuts, saying, tongue in cheek, “No, of course not, there were no clues.”
    I do recall one funny incident of confusion when El was about six and we went for a weekend to Gulfport, Mississippi. We stayed at the very nice Edgewater Hotel—a stay which I had won for us in some sort of Hammond organ contest. El had short straight hair and bangs at that time. Though she did wear dresses, while on vacation she mostly wore shorts and T-shirts. One morning while Elliott was in the elevator with Vance and Ellen, a hotel guest asked, “Is that a little boy or a little girl?”
    In a huff, Elliott replied, “That’s a little girl.” Then, as the elevator reached its destination, without missing a beat, he turned to Ellen and said, “Come on, Albert,” as they got out. Just more of her dad’s instant humor.
     
    E LLIOTT AND I felt blessed to have two very good, very sweet children. Aside from the present, this era—when Vance and Ellen