You see, 29 years ago, the school secretary paged my 4th grade classroom to announce the good news. I had a baby brother. We had dropped my mom off the night before at the IU Med Center in preparation for her C-Section May 7, 1979. I had been very quietly nervous, having gone through the baby dance a couple of years before that had ended with a small white coffin - not with a new baby at home.
This time everything was different.
My Uncle George picked me up after school and I went home to to put on clothes to meet my new brother.
My best dress, a lilac dress with a white collar. My black patent Mary Jane's. The best clothes I could think of to meet this new person. At 10, it didn't occur to me that the tiny guy wouldn't be able to see me. It mattered because this was the best day I'd ever had. I didn't know how to express how happy I was.
I couldn't hold him at the hospital, because he was in an incubator. But there he was, blonde hair, tiny little body.
He is no longer tiny. He's a grown man and can probably out cuss a sailor. (I like to think he gets that from me.)
He drives a freight train and sometimes a train full of clowns.
Happy Birthday Baby Brother.
You are still a little boy to me. And I love you very much.
3 comments:
Happy birthday little brother!
I feel confident that he learned some of his best curse words from you.
And the rest of them from the clowns.
Ahh, little Matt-Moo. I remember a little boy who used to dress up like Ed Grimley and shout "Norm!" to everybody that showed up to your party. These are tricks you'll need to teach to his kids.
. . . And the train full of clowns obviously couldn't teach him any curse words with all of the victims' body parts in their evil clown Penny-wise mouths. Those words all came from you.
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