Creation Myths

My brother Mark and I were the youngest of six children -- Mark was fifth and I was sixth. From an early age we both knew that (unlike the four children who preceded us) we were accidents. We knew this because we were told we were accidents, in those words, on numerous occasions. We weren't planned children. We weren't surprise children. We weren't even happy accidents. We were just plain accidents, like stubbed toes or fender benders.

I don't know what stories Mark was told about his days as an accidental fetus. I was told that my mother suffered greatly during her preganancy with me. My mother told me how she suffered. Her doctor told her that she "couldn't" have me -- that she would die if she had me. He offered her an unnamed "out" and she didn't take it, although she never told me why she didn't take it.

Certainly there were many times in my childhood when I wished she had taken it.

She told me that in her previous pregancies she had been busy and energetic and hadn't wanted any help. While she was pregnant with me, however, she was tired and uncomfortable.

Her mother had come to stay with her after the births of her other children, and she'd always been anxious for her mother to leave. But after I was born, she never wanted her mother to leave, because she was so tired and she needed the help.

I was an unpleasant baby. My mother told me so. I cried, and I cried. My parents had never had a child who cried so much. In fact, I was such a bothersome baby that my father nicknamed me "Sweet Martha", which was a joke, because I was sooooo not sweet.

A relative came for a visit while I was an infant. I cried and cried, per usual. My father was walking the floor with me, and called me Sweet Martha, and the relative said, "Sweet Martha my ass!"

Funny, right?

Mark so resented my presence that at the tender age of three he turned off the hot water heater just so my mother couldn't heat my bottle. What a clever little accident he was!

Those are all the stories I have of my infancy. I have those stories, and two photographs -- a pink ribbon in my barely-hair, which my mother told me she put on me simply because my hair was so thin and inconsequential.

The next photograph of me is my Kindergarten picture. My mother complained that I had smiled incorrectly and let the strap of my jumper sag. No other pictures until my sisters' graduation from highschool... a picture of me on the kitchen floor with the dog. I remember my mother yelling at my brother right after he took that picture. He was wasting the film.

Eric's mother has a story to tell, as well. She tells a similar story about each of her three children -- except that with each child, the story gets a little bit better.

Eric's mother didn't believe that she could ever be so lucky as to have a child. She had no reason to believe she couldn't physically have a baby -- she just couldn't imagine that she could be so blessed.

She was overjoyed when she discovered she was pregnant with Eric. She loved being pregnant, loved everything about it, and remembers her pregancies as particularly happy times in her life.

When Eric was born she would hold him and look at him and marvel that she had been so lucky. She says that she could have held any one of her babies forever. She says that sitting with one of her babies in her lap was the best thing in the world.

She couldn't imagine that she could get so lucky again. How could one woman have so much happiness -- to have Eric, and then to have another child? It didn't seem possible. When her second child was born, Eric's mother was again overjoyed. She would look at her, and hold her, and couldn't believe that her life could be so perfect.

Repeat the above with her third child, only multiply her wonder at her own good fortune.

I have wondered many times over the years why my mother didn't accept the abortion that her doctor serepticiously offered her. She wasn't a religious or even a spiritual woman. As far as I can remember, she wasn't even sentimental. But she certainly wanted me to know that she'd decided to have me, and at no small risk to her personal health and well being. Maybe she thought that if I knew about that decision, I would know that ultimately I was wanted, despite what a pain in the ass I was.

Barring an untimely mac truck, it seems likely that the accidental children -- children numbers five and six -- will be first and second to die. It's probably just the universe righting itself. Dams can be repaired, stubbed toes heal, insurance companies pay for fenders to be straightened, and accidental children go away. Is it wrong of me to think that my mother might be pleased? (Sweet Martha, my ass.)