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Short Story by Valentine St. Francis

You were so beautiful, in my eyes, when you
were born. I could visibly see that appearance the
movies don’t show and the parents don’t talk
about. The real sight of a new born child fresh out
of the womb with all the bodily fluids that needed
to be wiped off, the wrinkly skin and the prune like
look you resembled. Your face redder than a ripe
tomato picked fresh from a garden. Your head
was slightly pointy, almost like a cone.

While I was pregnant with you, I researched
and watched many videos of new born babies and
deliveries so that I’d prepare myself on what to
expect.

In some of the videos, the babies heads are
cone shaped due to squeezing through the
mother’s birth canal for what sometimes can be
up to even twelve hours. But some of the babies
had that contorted cone shaped head far more
drastically than others.

When you were born, it wasn’t nearly as bad
as some of the ones I had seen in those videos.
But you looked almost like ET And yes, in a funny
way it was very disgusting, at least I can say that
at an objective level. But even though I was
seeing visibly your state of being in that current
moment, all I could focus on was what I could see
with my heart.

A child with a future containing endless
possibilities. A future where your parents who love
you will assist in raising you and molding you into
a person of respect, dignity, empathy, love,
kindness and strength.

The future where you start to learn to walk
after living for years knowing only how to crawl.
When finally, you begin to understand that diapers
aren’t the only way to go potty. When you start
eating more and more solid food and your teeth
begin to show themselves in your bright-eyed
smile. When you start school and experience a
social environment and how to collaborate with
other children your age. When you start
experiencing the frustrations of figuring out how to
retain information at the most basic, infant level.

You start feeling the natural anxiety of
learning, homework, and deadlines. When you
need me to take you to and pick you up from
school but then in the coming years you want to
do it all by yourself. All alone, self sufficient, and
independent. You find yourself feeling excited to
see your friends but dread what feel like the
endless hours of monotonous school work.

You start to realize you are capable of
running faster than some and you tryout for track,
just like I did when I was a young girl. You love
basketball and you love football just like your
father when he was in middle school and you
become so good at it. And you have learned to
play fair and treat your opponents with respect
and realize its only a game. While some of the
other boys bully the weak ones, you stand up for
them and protect them, even when it’s boys from
the other team. And hearing the coaches tell me
of how good a role model you are for the other
team mates, I as your mother am so proud of my
little boy.

You aren’t the smallest nor the biggest boy
and you are never yearning for the attention of
others nor are you an isolated child. You seem
entirely content being right where you are and I
am so happy. The type of happy that goes beyond
words and is nearly impossible to accurately
describe.

Then you start to experience the weird and
awkward changes that occur now that high school
is approaching. Your body is changing and your
voice begins to deepen. Your shoulders widen
and you start to get taller but you don’t even
realize it. Unlike your grandparents who when
they see you every several months, they are in
complete shock by how much you grew. But I,
even I who see you every day, start to notice how
you are transforming incredibly and me and your
father are covered in amazement at the beautiful
young man you are elegantly morphing into.

And of course the scary hormone monster
every adult tells you is called “Puberty” starts to
implement its changes like it does with every boy
and girl’s body your age. The testosterone starts
to change you and you begin to realize that girls
not only aren’t gross anymore, but in fact, they
are everything but gross. The entire and complete
polar-opposite, you feel this innate attraction that
draws you toward their presence and a natural
desire to impress them. The intimate and sexual
feelings that start to just show up out of nowhere
as a result of the changing chemicals in your brain
and the developing hormones in your body.

Then your sophomore year, this new girl
arrives at your school and is in the same grade.
Lucky for you she also is in Geometry during first
period as well. You see this girl. She has
sparkling eyes, a pure and loving smile and
glowing, radiant skin. Her long dark hair flows
past her shoulders and you feel your heart begin
to beat faster and the blood rushes through your
body after she brushes your arm with her hand
when she passes you by. How you can’t wait to
call her after you have practice, and you’ve been
dating her since your sophomore year and now
that you’re a senior and soon to graduate, you
decide it’s time she met me. Me and your father.
And so you invite her for dinner and we have an
amazing time, I bond with her and you and your
dad start arguing about the Dallas cowboys and
whether that Tony Romo, or whatever his name
is, was a great quarterback or not. And she tells
me of what it was like first meeting you and what
your awkward first conversation was like and
she’s laughing and I’m laughing and cringing for
the best reasons possible as I sit there listening
as she talks while reminiscing of how your father
and I first met and our awkward first conversation.

Finally the time arrives that all parents dread.
The time where you and your beautiful girlfriend
go off to the same college and I cry while your
father holds me, comforting me and telling me that
I should be happy because now you will truly
begin life’s path to success. He reassures me that
you will be fine and everything will be okay and
that we will speak every weekend over the phone
and have you every summer and every
Christmas.

Four years go by so fast yet so slow without
you home most of the time throughout the years
but you’ve finally acquired a degree in psychology
with a minor in neurology and you stay for another
two years to earn your masters. Me and your
father see how much you’ve matured over the
years and how your abilities in communicating
and empathizing with others has only gotten
better than it already was from the beginning.

Ever since you were little, I noticed how gentle
and kind you were. How impressive it was when
you were fifteen and you were so in touch with
your emotions, especially for a boy. How relieved
I was when you, now as an adult, were visiting
back from college the summer before your senior
year and you expressed that you weren’t very sad
or heartbroken when you and your girlfriend from
high school broke up. How you told me it was
mutual and you both realized that you just weren’t
right for each other and you said you hoped she
was happy. And then how quick and excited you
were to tell me about this new girl you met
recently who is about to finish her masters in
Criminal Justice with a minor in Forensic
Psychology. You told me about how she had
bright red hair and freckles on her face and big
bright blue eyes that looked like melting ice in the
sunlight. And you said what you loved most about
her was how much smarter she was than you.
And how she made you excited about life
because she emanated a bubbly excitement that
was contagious as it was comforting.

And in the years to come, even after you had
opened your first family counseling business, after
your marriage to her, after your first child, and our
first grandson, I still knew you always had a life
that was so far ahead in the future and would
continue to flourish way beyond after we had
passed away. I remember how satisfied with life
as a mother and now grandmother I felt.

I saw that all in a glimpse when you rested
peacefully and quiet in my cradling arms. And
even throughout the tears blinding my vision, my
screaming that nearly tore my vocal chords to
shreds, and the hazy fog of my mind trying to
properly comprehend the distant and morbidly
surreal echoing sounds of the doctor trying to tell
me it was what was called eclampsia and that
there was nothing that could’ve been done, even
after the morning we buried you at Mount Sinai
Cemetery and bishop Taylor tried to comfort me
telling me that the Bible says all babies go to
heaven, after the years of waking up from the
sweat inducing horrifying nightmares and night
terrors, and even after going to a psychologist for
years and after being in a psych ward on multiple
occasions after failing suicide in numerous
attempts to escape the grief of missing you and
the pain I put your father through, I still knew that I
had missed out on a life I wanted you to have so
badly and more than anything. I saw it all in a
single fleeting moment as you lied lifelessly in my
arms. And that moment that flashed passed me…
that was your life. What would have and could
have been your life. Your life through my eyes.