Part 1

I'm thinking about writing a book.  A novel dressed up as memoirs of someone who resembles me, made slightly more interesting by fudging some of the details that have become blurry over the years, whether as an act of self preservation or just thanks to this sieve that is now my brain. So I've decided to start writing down snippets of what would be in the book, try to train myself to see if I am really up to the task.  This is a story about love.  It is your typical love story, which means it is like no story about love you've ever heard before.  It is a story about humanity and our individually infinite capacity for love in the midst of living out our very hate filled, dirty, messy lives.  It’s my story, some of it may be true, most of it isn't, at least not in a historical sense.  But you may see in it a reflection of your story, and in that way it is completely true.

I first met him when I was six years old.  He had a third 21^st chromosome and he was far more perfect than any of us who had only 46 chromosomes.  His name was Ben and I fell instantly in love.  He was magical. His complete infantile helplessness was mesmerizing and demanded all of your time and attention and you gave it gladly.  I met him a dark late November night, when he entered this world and almost took our mother out of it in one fell swoop. 

I was so young that it is now hard to tell what parts of these memories are made up,   convoluted or proper, but I remember things from at least four years earlier than this, so it is probably safe to view the account as fairly accurate.  I went to bed November 18, 1983 amidst whispers of older siblings and mom and dad about preparations for a birth.  I climbed the stairs across the foyer from my parents’ bedroom oh so slowly, so as to hear as much as possible without overtly disobeying the instruction to go to bed.  With each of the thirteen steps the wood planks creaked beneath my feet, betraying the fact that I was still on them, but no one would notice this time, they were too busy in the master bedroom. 

I could imagine the scene without being in there to see it.  The gigantic room was dimly lit by low wattage bulbs ensconced in bulbous amber lampshades, which lent an orange glow somewhere halfway between gloomy and romantic.  Though the windows were closed, there was a wicked winter wind blowing from the northeast and slipping through the panes eerily rippling through the diaphanous cream sheers across the front of the room while the floral heavy damask drapes stood their watch on either end.  There was still a crib in the front left corner of the room; although it probably hadn't been used since I was the baby and even then not very often.  Mom, an avid breast feeder and an “attachment” parenting trailblazer even before it had a name, let most of us snuggle up next to her for the better part of our first two years.  The wall was covered in alternating stripes and florals wallpaper with a coffee, cream and maybe a hint of mauve color scheme.  One set of bare feet walked across the plush beige carpet, a boiling pot of water in hand, followed by another with a gigantic “placenta bowl” which also doubled as the popcorn bowl when no babies were being born.

At the time, dad was “furloughed” from the airlines, seemed that he couldn't ever pick the right airline at the right time and just make a ton of money flying for united or delta.  No, he had a bit of bad luck about things like that.  When he was younger he'd squandered a small fortune in Atlantic City and had to get bailed out of some drunken brawl over not being allowed to play past when he went bust by his little brother and was kindly asked never to return to the boardwalk again.  He was currently employed in some adult gambling accepted by polite society, known better as day trading on Wall Street.  Apparently having the same streak of luck as he'd always had in regards to money he was losing far more than he was making to bring home to his family of already 8 children, with the ninth on the way. None of the family members were insured and there were no doctors who would come  to the house to do the delivery for a nominal fee (so they wouldn't have to pay the hospital fees-because those are the ones that will break you) for fear of opening themselves up to malpractice claims.

This fit hand in hand with the wild religious kick mom and dad were currently on, the which they would later blame the other for, but I'll tell you that both of them were all in from where I stood.  Mom was a religious zealot, a true believer in everything she ever believed, and dad could use that kind of fervor to his favor and jumped right on board.   You see, believing that God is omnipotent and still does miracles and that it is only a lack of faith that necessitated the modern conveniences of medicine and doctors fit right into their present need to steer clear of those very things because they were uninsured.  So mom had no prenatal care with this pregnancy, and it seemed to go rather smoothly, so perhaps it was completely unnecessary anyway.  And here she was preparing for her second home birth in less than three years.

Mom was laying in the middle of the king size, pine, four poster bed, with the covers turned down, in her white eyelet nightgown with towels spread under and around her.  I wondered then as I do now, why she wore that stark white dress for an event that is always bloody and would prove to be particularly so this time.  Another set of feet slipped and scratched across the carpet bringing a cup of ice and a pitcher of water.  Someone left and came back and brought with them the scissors that had been boiled in a pot of water and laid them on a towel on the side table.  She labored in near silence-but the quiet moans carried through the house and filled its occupants with a strange foreboding.  A chill ran down my spine as I reached the top of the stairs and heard dad say to the assembled crew, “Let’s get ready to have a baby.”

I was young, so I feel asleep rather quickly, and when you are young you dream vividly, and remember well.  I had one of the most memorable dreams of my life that night, I remember it like it happened last night, only I can't remember what I actually did dream last night.  I heard a scream coming from downstairs and it made me wake up.  I tiptoed to the top of the stairs and heard an argument between my father and a sister regarding whether or not to call 911.  There was no telling who won the argument, in fact I don't think either did, but another sister took advantage of the distraction to actually slip out to the kitchen and call the ambulance from there.  I went downstairs as the ambulance arrived with its male and female occupants.  He was tall and young, a caucasian with dirty blond hair, fit underneath a layer of comfortable fat, with a receding hairline that seemed out of synch with his round baby face.  She was short and somewhat older, stocky and voluptuous with a ton of gorgeous wavy black hair and she was telling her partner something in her Long Island/Puerto Rican accent. They entered the house and I followed them as they walked past the blood soaked carpet of the master bedroom, walked through the front hallway to the kitchen and grabbed something to eat.  They continued into the den and sat on the blue and gold peacock patterned sectional and began playing darts.  I found them to be interesting, which I knew was sinful and faithless.  And my interest invited them to read my thoughts somehow.  I didn't want them to take my mom away, even though that was their intended mission, so they gave me a shot of something that in my mind was most sinisterly intended to murder me and then made off with my mother in their truck.

I did not want to die in the dream, and quickly realized it was a dream, and shook myself awake. I woke up in a puddle of nightmarish sweat and heard only the whistling of the wind through the house.  No, there was something else, but instead of adding noise, it almost made the house seem more silent.  It was a low, lamb-like, weak, whimpering cry of a newborn, who didn't have enough energy to really let it rip. It was the sound of Ben, and it beckoned me to find it.  In a post nightmare, dream fog, I followed the sound, expecting to find my mother near its source, but finding only a tiny strange faced baby.  He had the face of an angel: a high round forehead, round wide set eyes with heavy folds pulling across them in almost an Asian way, ruby red lips and a tiny body wrapped in several towels.  He had been left there in the middle of the bed and I curled up next to him and as we breathed in concert with each other the little trembling bleating stopped and he fell asleep.  I looked down at him, lying on a bed that had no sheets and a huge bloodstain on it, beginning a trail that would lead to the carpet, then to the tiles in the bathroom and ultimately to what looked like the scene of a massacre in the bathtub.  I missed the signs that my mother almost died that night; at least in my conscious state I missed them, because I was so drawn in by this baby.  I couldn't take my eyes and thoughts off of him.  He wooed me and captured my heart and warmed me and I knew I would never let him go.  I was in love and in that love was a peace that didn't make any sense because later I would realize I should have been frightened that night.  But as I was lying there next to my last baby brother, the world felt perfect.  There were no angels singing or dancing their light off the early morning ripples of the bay, but an angelic love radiated from this baby.

Shuffling of feet in and out of the room and cleaning and whispering happened all night long.  It was as if it was happening in a different dimension and though I didn't sleep, I rested with my arm encircling Ben.  I wanted to savor every second of this night, I didn't  want to even close my eyes as if that might break the spell that he had weaved around us with his magic powers.  There was a sense that this wouldn't last forever but for as long as it could last, I would be completely present.