Prompt: A Shoebox (300 words or less)

Erma Bombeck or Ann Landers, Dear Abby, Miss Manners, Garfield, Madame Blavatsky, Charlie Brown—one of those purveyors of wisdom in a can—whichever of them wrote this treacle in print, my mother clipped the column from the newspaper and left it on my bed, as if a newspaper clipping were a piece of foil-wrapped chocolate.

It was not unusual for my mother to cut columns from the newspaper or an article from some idiotic magazine to leave on my bed. Articles or pamphlets about Girl Scouting or quilting bees for teens, but I was not one for group activities. Then there was that spate of straight-from-the-heart-of-Hallmark greeting cards left there for no occasion other than Just Because I Love You or I Love You Thiiiiiiisss Much. I never knew what to say about those cards, and so I said nothing.

The title of this newspaper clipping read “To the Middle Child.”

Although titled “To the Middle Child,” it opened with the part To the Firstborn:

To the Firstborn—I’ve always loved you best because you were our first miracle. You were the fulfillment of young love. With you, we became a family. Nothing was ever as thrilling as your first smile and your first words. We cheered your first steps but we were afraid to let go of your hand. Your Baby Book was an encyclopedia, fully illustrated and annotated. You had more clothes than a Barbie doll.

 

There was more, but it was more of the same.

 

To the Middle Child—I’ve always loved you best because you drew the dumb spot in the family, and it made you stronger for it. You cried less. You had more patience. You wore faded clothes that were hand-me-downs. You were forgiving. You never in your life did anything “first” but it only made you more special. The world would not come to an end if you went to bed with dirty feet.

 

To the Baby—I’ve always loved you best because you will always be my sweetest baby, even when you’re all grown up with children of your own. You are the joy that gives . . .

 

I read and I re-read: the first miracle, the dumb spot, the sweetest baby, the sweetest baby, the first miracle, the dumb spot, the dumb spot.

 

I read this again and again until the words melted into each other, like a spill on the floor. Then, I flushed the newspaper clipping down the toilet, and stayed in the bathroom until it—whatever it was—went away.

 

There was another clipping also dedicated to the plight of the middle child that my mother left on my bed. This one was a poem that had to have been transcendent, something I could not yet comprehend, but, over time, with the wisdom I was sure I’d acquire—because, fundamentally, I was sure that I was deep—it would become clear. In light of the anticipated epiphany, I put the poem in the shoebox where I’d kept ticket stubs, postcards, notes passed in class, a dried flower, all of which, I imagined, would someday be a box filled with memories; ones I’d actually want to remember. Lots of people keep that sort of box. The difference being that, even at the time, I knew that my box contained pretty much nothing but evidence of my desperation. Nevertheless, for quite a few years, I kept the box of good times that never happened with the hope that posterity could be duped. In whatever way I’d wished my life might be imagined after my death, I was unable to deceive myself on such a grand scale. I had no desire to sift through my scraps of humiliation. Other than the poem that my mother had left for me on my bed, I never took a second look at anything secreted away in that particular shoebox of memories. The poem I returned to many, many times.

 

The Middle Child

 

Even though your [sic] not the oldest,

Or the youngest, you’re the middle.

With a sandwich of ham and cheese

It’s good to have a pickle.

And in the middle of your body,

You will find your belly.

The belly is like the engine

that runs a good machine;

your family wouldn’t be the same

without you in between.

 

There had to be a code, a way to reveal the secret, the mystery behind these words, and although I was unable to grasp it, to know it, I never ceased to marvel at its otherworldliness, how the words were strung together to create nothing. Nothing. The creation of nothing is mind-bogglingly beautiful. Like how infinity is beautiful, and how stars have long before burned out by the time we see them, that where we see a star, there is, in fact, nothing. The poem belonged with those elements of the natural world like the speed of light and quarks and that there is so much shit packed into one nucleus, things I knew to be true, but still, I could not make them real. The poem was there, on paper, in my hands, but I could not grab hold of it any more than I could grab hold of the nothingness before the Big Bang.

 

It’s good to have a pickle.

 

*Middle Child Syndrome is sometimes referred to as Middle Child Personality, and it’s not much of a good personality. A quick Google search yields yards of postings of negativity: resentful, attention-seeking, withdrawn, lonely, and often voted most likely to fail.