What was going on when I was born?

In a case similar to that of Poland, the State Department said today that the Federal Government is reimbursing two private American banks $5.8 million because Rumania has failed to meet payments due on Federally guaranteed loans for grain purchases. But neither the Reagan Administration nor the private American banks handling the loans to Rumania have moved to declare that country in default, Dean Fischer, a State Department spokesman, said. Rumania owes $91 million for grain purchased with guarantees from the Agriculture Department's Commodity Credit Corporation. That agency also has guaranteed $1.6 billion in loans over several years for Polish food purchases. The Administration announced last month that it would reimburse $71 million to American banks because the Poles had missed that much in repayments.

Articles in Metropolitan Report on Jan. 28 and 29 about the suspects in the Brink's holdup, discussing a violent protest at Kennedy Airport, incorrectly described the racial makeup of the Springbok rugby team of South Africa. There was one nonwhite player on the team that toured the United States.

IT is difficult to go to the Cloisters in Fort Tryon Park on a fine morning toward the end of winter and not feel pleased and uplifted. The sun gives light, if not heat. The air in the central cloister itself is scented ever so slightly by orange trees. The works of art are awesome. Even the staff seems to be having a good time. As of today and through Sept. 15 this state of affairs will be heightened and multiplied by a temporary exhibition that is one of the most extraordinary things of its kind. ''Radiance and Reflection'' is its general title, and it consists of medieval sculpture and stained glass from the collection of the late Raymond Pitcairn.

The Reagan Administration decided today to order an embargo of oil from Libya, Administration officials said. They said the decision was approved by President Reagan at a National Security Council meeting this afternoon and follows months of discussion within the Administration on steps to be taken against the regime of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, which the Administration has accused of supporting world terrorism. The National Security Council also voted to cut off the sale of United States-made oil drilling equipment to Libya, the officials said. They asked that their names not be used.

''When this bill becomes law, I have failed, but not until then.'' - Senator Lowell P. Weicker Jr., ending filibuster against antibusing legislation. (A14:1.)

A change in the design of the walkways over the atrium lobby of the Kansas City Hyatt Regency Hotel was crucial in causing their collapse at a crowded tea dance last July, the National Bureau of Standards said today. The report on the disaster, which killed 113 people and injured 186, followed a six-month investigation. It is the first official accounting of the causes of the building failure. The bureau said that the walkways, as built, could support only about one-quarter of the load required by the Kansas City, Mo., building code. It said that even if the walkways had been constructed in keeping with the original design, the structure would have been considerably weaker than was required.

After its rapprochement with the United Automobile Workers fell apart last month, the General Motors Corporation chose a familiar route to counter dismal sales. It announced plans to close three plants indefinitely in March, including its Chevrolet and Cadillac plant here, and throw another 7,000 employees out of work. The breakdown in talks and the subsequent layoffs caught many labor relations specialists off guard. General Motors had won high marks for improving morale and productivity on the factory floor since the last big recession in 1974. Its worker participation programs, which in general give employees more responsibility on the assembly line, have been widely copied. Moreover, many management specialists had pointed to G.M. as an example of how a large American manufacturer is meeting Japanese competition by reducing labor tensions and improving products.

The Congressional Budget Office, in a ''very grim'' assessment of President Reagan's proposed budget, said today that the White House had underestimated its proposed deficit for the fiscal year 1983 by $29 billion and warned of ''continuing large and growing Federal deficits into the foreseeable future.'' Contrary to the Reagan Administration's avowed objective of steadily declining deficits, the budget office calculated that the President's budget would result in steadily increasing deficits, from $111 billion in the fiscal year 1982 to almost $140 billion in fiscal 1985. The reason for this growth, the report said, is that the Administration's tax cut would produce ''a widening gap between revenues and outlays.'' ''This is a very grim outlook for the budget,'' Alice M. Rivlin, director of the budget office, told the Senate Appropriations Committee.

The Defense Minister of Saudi Arabia, Prince Sultan, has privately signed an agreement on conditions for Saudi operation of the Awacs radar planes to be sold to his country, according to State Department, Pentagon and Congressional officials. But it was not immediately clear whether the Saudi Defense Minister had accepted all the conditions that President Reagan promised the Senate would be in effect before the planes were transferred to Saudi control. To help gain Senate approval of the $8.5 billion sale, Mr. Reagan set down conditions last October and promised to get the Saudis to agree. Delivery of the Airborne Warning and Control System planes is scheduled to start in 1985.

In a constitutional confrontation with the Reagan Administration, a House committee voted today to cite Interior Secretary James G. Watt for contempt of Congress for failing to provide subpoenaed documents. The 23-to-19 vote in the Energy and Commerce Committee was almost entirely along party lines. The issue now shifts to the full House of Representatives, where Democrats are in the majority. If the House votes to cite Mr. Watt for contempt, the matter would then probably be referred under the law to a grand jury for criminal prosecution.

The General Motors Corporation said yesterday that it would permanently close four automobile parts plants in the next two years. It said it can obtain the parts less expensively elsewhere. The move, which will put 9,620 employees on indefinite layoff, brings to seven the number of plant closings announced by General Motors since the company's contract negotiations with the United Automobile Workers collapsed at the end of January. However, Alfred Warren, General Motors' vice president for industrial relations and the company's chief negotiator in last month's U.A.W. talks, told a reporter in Detroit that the company might be willing to negotiate keeping open some - but not all - of the four parts plants, if the union comes back to the bargaining table before its contract with G.M. expires in September.

Because of a transmission error, the review of Garry Wills's book ''The Kennedy Imprisonment: A Meditation on Power'' yesterday included two incorrect references to the author Veblen. They should have read ''Weber.''