 |
| Image by Teece Aronin |
There never was any of that, but for one day there was Kay, a tiny train that barely left the station. And for more than fifty years there has been me, the train that left years later to travel miles beyond her.
Kay was born at full-term but breathed too soon, and with that over-eager breath, ingested amniotic fluid. She was cleaned up by the nurses and placed in a bassinette where whatever could be done for her back then was done. On the other side of the nursery window my father stood, murmuring over and over, "The more I see her, the more I want her."
From that day on, when my father spoke of Kay, he called her "Kay-Baby."
When Kay died, my father got back to his job, and my mother returned to the full-time care of their toddler son. That's how the Greatest Generation grieved, by blowing their noses, wiping their tears, and getting back to the tasks at hand. Not long after that, my parents had another child, a boy who thrived. They considered their family complete and once again, got on with things.
Almost seven years later, I was born, an oops baby if ever there had been. My mother was 32 when her doctor broke the news, my father, 47.
My mother wasn't thrilled to learn of her pregnancy. In those days, even at her age, she was considered a bit old to be pregnant, and her boys had long since stopped draining her with the demands of babies. Then, my aunt said something that turned my mother around: "Maybe this one will be a girl."
My father was delighted from the get-go.
Like my brothers and unlike my sister, I was born without complications, and I knew from early on that a baby girl had come before me but died. I stood on a kitchen chair one day, helping my mother bake cookies. I asked her if I was Kay. To me it made perfect sense that if a little girl was born and died, the sister born after would be the kind of do-over that God would permit Himself under special circumstances.
My mother's reaction to my question, along with her response, are lost to me now.
I pictured Kay's soul as a beautiful piece of cloth blowing in the breeze and hovering over the world. With my birth, it floated back down, became my soul and helped me become me, Kay-Baby restored.
The idea that I might be Kay, that the universe can recycle a soul taken out of circulation too soon, still appeals to me somehow.
Today Kay-Baby's remains lie in a cemetery next to my parents'. But maybe, just maybe, the bigger part of her is sitting here writing these words.
