The Cradle

I remember the afternoon as if it were last week. My mother seated across from me at the table. The kitchen table with the afternoon Sun peaking in through the window. She sent my younger brother outside to play. We had been going through photos, cleaning through clatter, when I chanced upon a set of photos of my mother clearly pregnant, holding my hand as a toddler. This immediately confused me, my brother and I are almost 7 years apart. I was not a toddler when he was born. I remember the day that he came home from the hospital. I was confused, so I asked my mother about the pictures. She was smiling in the photo her hair up in curls like a crown upon her head. She had a bright yellow dress on and a prominent bulge right there out front, with a large, obnoxious white bow, accentuating her belly full of life. The photo had been taken outside with a table and balloons in the background. It seemed to be a festive time, and yet I was confused because I didn't remember any of this. And that's when she told me, when I was just under 2 years old, my mother became pregnant with her second child, a boy, he was born a month early, but he was already over 8 and a 1/ 2 pounds He was breached, and in those days. I suppose C sections werent so common.They try to turn the baby but basically my baby brother suffocated during the birthing process. My mother was then drugged, and basically she was in and out of consciousness for the next 3 to 5 days, my father was left alone to make funeral arrangements, to tell the family and friends, what had happened & select a tiny little coffin, purchase clothes. There was a funeral & a rosary. By the time my mother was allowed by the doctors to come out of her drug-induced stupor - my baby brother had been buried. e She denied that closure. She was not there at the funeral of her baby boy, herr first son! And yet when she spoke about it and she did lament the fact that she was not there to bury her son, that she was not there for the funeral, that there was no closure, BUT her biggest regret, her biggest sorrow was that she was not there to help my father that he, and he alone went through all of this, what a testament of love and devotion. his wife lay drugged in a hospital bed. It is truly tragic and I felt the tears well in my eyes - then I felt a horrible wave - a flood of guilt and shame rained down upon me for I often teased my brother, who was born when I was almost 7, I would always tease him about him being my favorite brother, that he was the fpavorite son, not knowing that he was the only son that survived. my baby brother's name. It's Joseph Alan and I remember sitting at the kitchen table. The afternoon sun peaking through the curtains. My mother telling the story was too calm. She never cried. She never shed a tear. Her voice never faltered, but there was a piece of paper in front of her, a piece of junk mail from rhe morning and a pen, and she was doodling. At first I really didn't pay attention, it was a common habit she had - to embellish whatever piece of paper or junk mail was laying around. At first it seemed like she was just repeating a bunch of circles. I was more enraptured, with the story being told. And at the end of our conversation, I looked at the piece of paper and she had doodled a baby carriage in blue that took up the entire page we of paper. She is the strongest woman I know. Mission: transform this essay/prose into a poem