Kristen Iversen - Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats

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This is a work of nonfiction. Some of the names have been changed to protect individuals privacy. The use of pseudonyms is indicated in the endnotes.

Copyright 2012 by Kristen Iversen

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crown Publishers,
an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com

C ROWN and the Crown colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

All (66) lines from Plutonian Ode from Collected Poems 19471980
by Allen Ginsberg
Copyright 1984 by Allen Ginsberg.
Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Full body burden : growing up in the nuclear shadow of Rocky Flats / Kristen Iversen.
p. cm.
1. Iversen, Kristen. 2. Rocky Flats Plant (U.S.)Environmental aspects. 3. Rocky Flats Plant (U.S.)History. 4. Rocky Flats Plant (U.S.)Health aspects. 5. Nuclear weapons plantsHealth aspectsColorado. 6. PlutoniumHealth aspectsColorado. 7. Radioactive waste sitesCleanupColorado. 8. Radioactive pollutionColoradoJefferson County. 9. Jefferson County (Colorado)Biography. I. Iversen, Kristen. II. Title: Growing up in the nuclear shadow of Rocky Flats.
TD195.N85I84 2012
363.17990978884dc23

2011045902

eISBN: 978-0-307-95564-7

PHOTOGRAPH BY ROBERT L. TELISCHAK
JACKET BACKGROUND IMAGE: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, PRINTS & PHOTOGRAPHS DIVISION, HAER COLO, 30-GOLD, V, 18

v3.1_r1

For my family: my siblings, Karin, Karma, and Kurt;
my father; and in loving memory of my mother.
Most of all, this book is for Sean and Nathan,
who have lived with it from the beginning.

I suppose my thinking began to be affected soon after atomic science was firmly established. Some of the thoughts that came were so unattractive to me that I rejected them completely, for the old ideas die hard, especially when they are emotionally as well as intellectually dear to one. It was pleasant to believe, for example, that much of Nature was forever beyond the tampering reach of manhe might level the forests and dam the streams, but the clouds and the rain and the wind were Gods.

RACHEL CARSON

BODY BURDEN: THE AMOUNT
OF RADIOACTIVE MATERIAL
PRESENT IN A HUMAN BODY,
WHICH ACTS AS AN INTERNAL
AND ONGOING SOURCE OF
RADIATION

I ts 1963 and Im five. I lie across the backseat of the family car, sleeping with my cheek pressed against the vinyl. My mother sits in the front with baby Karin and my father drives, carefully holding his cigarette just at the windows edge. This is how I remember my mother and father: smoking in a cool, elegant way that makes me want to grow up quick so I can smoke, too. Its evening and Im tired and cranky. The spring day has been spent on a long drive through the Colorado mountains, a Sunday ritual.

We turn the corner to our home on Johnson Court, the square little house my parents bought when my father left his job as an attorney for an insurance company and set up his own law practice. The neighborhood is made up of winding rows of houses that all look like ours: a front door and a picture window facing the street, two windows on each side, and a sliding door in the back that opens to a postage-stamp backyard. We have a view of the mountains and one tree.

Uh-oh, my mother says.

Jesus. My dad stops the car. I scramble to my knees to look.

Our house is smoldering. One side is gone. A fire truck and a police car with streaking red lights stand in the driveway.

My dad jumps out and my mom reaches over and pulls up the parking brake. Dick, she says, Im taking Kris to the neighbors. My mother is always good in a crisis.

Mrs. Hauschild is waiting at her door. She takes a pair of pajamas from her daughters roomwere almost the same ageand she beds me down in the basement in a sleeping bag. Shell be fine here, Mrs. Hauschild says. She doesnt need to see all that commotion. She suggests they both have a drink and a cigarette. My mother nods.

Someone must have left the lamp on in Kriss bedroom, my mother says as they walk up the stairs. The drapes caught on fire.

I repeat these words in my head until I come to believe I set the fire myself. I can still picture my bedside lamp, the brass switch, the round orange globe always warm to the touch.