I was late. Born in the wrong year, according to my mother. Though scheduled to clear her womb in 1967, I was mule-headed and did not exit my mother’s body until late January 1968.
The story was a good one. My mother swore by it. People clucked and laughed when she told it. Growing up, it made my birth seem special. Like I was cracked from another of Adam’s ribs or crawled from my mother’s womb fully-formed and armored, like some commonplace Athena.
I imagined myself made stronger by all that time inside her. As if twenty-eight extra days and twenty-eight extra nights pressed against the lungs could compensate for the lack of baby pictures, the lack of a proper last name, the lack of a daddy. As if four weeks could ever make such a difference.
We were all late, according to my mother. Except for her first, my brother Will, who was two months early, born backward and twisted. Breach baby. He almost didn’t make it, she said. The cord curled round his neck, threatened to pull him back into the womb. Keep him. Will was the only one who’d surprised her—the one whose birth she spoke of with wide eyes and hushed tones. The rest of us were easy—forward-bound, fat-faced, and untangled.
And a month late.
She just carried her babies longer than most, she’d explain if you asked, and if you listened, really listened, you’d understand that it was my mother, not us, who was special—the way her body wouldn’t give up its pearls. She’d say it’s just a part of who she is, the same way she stopped any watch she wore, all that energy pulsing through her veins. Some things the body just refuses to share.
My mother told the stories of our births over and over, and made them bigger with each telling. We were her handiwork. So she talked about water breaking, the running of fingernails into wood grain, the cutting of umbilical cords. Her tales were rich in gook and detail. Nothing was left out. Except for fathers. They were ghosts that folded themselves into the edges of her tales, vapors that floated in and out of delivery rooms, with us somehow, but never really showing themselves.