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It's not a memory but the memory of a story, yet another story told about me as a baby, all of them emphasizing my unfriendly nature from the early days, the baby from hell, the disrupter of family peace.
In this particular story I am eleven months old. For some reason Myron and Eileen have taken my big brother, then three and a half, and gone off for the day. (Surly me imagines a much-needed holiday from difficult Baby Ann.)
I am left in the care of Aunt Jeannette. Jeannette is eight and a half months pregnant with her first child, who will be my cousin J.T. Her story (and it is her story because I am only eleven months old and will remember nothing) is this: as soon as my family leaves the house I look at Jeannette and begin to wail. I don't know whether she tries to comfort me. Maybe I won't allow it. I am not yet walking. Having seen her I crawl away from her, crying, into the next room and then the next. Gradually my tears stop though my breath is still ragged. Crawling through doorways brings me in a circle back to the living room where Jeannette sits. I see her, burst into tears, then turn around to crawl in the other direction--away from her. Only to find that "away from her" leads directly to her again.
This, according to Jeannette, goes on all day long. The circular path from room to room always brings me back to her. And then I scream again and go away from her again. And come upon her again. And scream.
My family came back to me that evening, or so they tell me. And later that night J.T. was born. Jeannette always insisted I brought on the birth by making her day so stressful.
Whose point of view shall we take here? Shall we imagine my beleaguered family who needed a brief vacation? Shall we put ourselves into the mind of poor Jeannette, assailed by her screaming baby niece? Or shall we provide some sympathy for an unhappy, abandoned baby?
Musings blog: http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com
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