Opening of Ugly Valentine - a novel idea

Hospital waiting room is awash with anticipation.   A tension of joy hangs on every lip, but the possibility of the awry on the same cusp.   Better to think in optimism at this point, there’s no signs of complications, no warnings of danger lurking to be a thief – that comes later.   What happens is predictable.  Baby is delivered screaming and demanding of the world.   Removed from a hug of watery womb and deposited into the hands of exhausted mother.   Covered in gunk, cooing for a moment while it finds lip to breast.   Tiny little hands unsure of how to be worked rest on heaving flesh of mother.  In hospital waiting room big brother sits nervous with grandma.   Littler big brother scribbles with crayons in book on floor, probably Ninja Turtles but indiscernible when washed with midnight blues and olive greens.  Black lines dictating edges are blended amongst the wax crayons.

Biggest brother is called Luke, other big brother, but little, is Aaron – me – almost seven, and almost 3 respectively.   Grandma minding them is daddy’s mom, a harsh woman, with a softness in her eyes, but frailty in her bones – later to succumb to her own tragedies but now is only tragically scary in the eyes of children.   There’s a Bible on her lap, an invisible nervous twitch in her fingers, or a shakiness do to the passages of time and deterioration of body.   Across the way is mommy’s parents, both present, both full round.   Susceptible to a certain frailty but healthy for them, and happy to be there.   Brother’s never knew daddy’s daddy, heard he was good, kind, and couldn’t speak a word of English, and was responsible for the Mexican hair atop Aaron’s head.

Ninja Turtles colored whatever give way to Ninja Turtles not filled in as page flips with the scratch of paper on paper.  Nurse comes out, baby has been cleaned up but little Aaron is busy scribbling inside and outside and ever which side of the lines.   Luke is up by grandma’s side as she struggles a moment to stand and the others as well, following in a trail of sliding steps down white pristine hallways, sanitized and smelling as hospitals smell.

Inside room where National Geographic depictions of natural grotesqueness ensued there is little evidence to suggest it did.  A doctor turns head with stethoscope on baby’s chest, and nods, a smile on his face watching the nervous brother’s pace into the room.   Where one day when adult boys have children of their own and know through education what kind of chaos occurs in that room, now, have little to imagine other than the magic of baby in and baby out, as though it were possible that stork did deposit swaddling infant from the baby store a day late from the delivery date.