(no subject)
I've mentioned before that my parents had a child a few years before Mouseferatu was born. His name was David, and he died of Meconium aspiration when he was just a few days old.
Over the years, I've thought a lot about David and the associated could-have-beens. The only truly mean thing that Mouseferatu has ever done to me was when he told me once that if David had lived, I would never have been born. (I was 5 at the time, and was very upset by this. To be fair, this was around the time that our parents finally buried David's ashes. I wasn't really clued in back then, but Mouse was 10 and was probably doing a lot of processing himself.) If David had lived, neither one of us would have been born, because the whole course of our parents' lives and their family planning would have been different. Maybe there's some parallel universe where it happened that way, and it would be neat to see how things turned out, but those are such radical changes that there's just no way to speculate.
My father likes to tell this story about me: Mouseferatu was a really easy baby. As long as he got food and sleep, he was fine1. After I was born, my mother told my father, before we'd even left the hospital, "This one's different. This one's obstinate2." My father was like, "she's only a few days old! How can you possibly know this?" And my mother said, "I can tell."
Temperament displays pretty early. Mine was evident at just a few days. David was alive for a few days. What was his temperament like? Until earlier today, it had never even occurred to me to ask. I have no intention of asking my parents: it's been almost 40 years, and chances are that between the damage and the attempted treatment there would have been very little opportunity for display. But all this time I've been thinking of David as someone who existed only in potentia, and it's a little shocking to think that no, he was actual. Not fully developed or fully realized, but still fully real.
1Clearly, not much has changed.
2 See 1
Over the years, I've thought a lot about David and the associated could-have-beens. The only truly mean thing that Mouseferatu has ever done to me was when he told me once that if David had lived, I would never have been born. (I was 5 at the time, and was very upset by this. To be fair, this was around the time that our parents finally buried David's ashes. I wasn't really clued in back then, but Mouse was 10 and was probably doing a lot of processing himself.) If David had lived, neither one of us would have been born, because the whole course of our parents' lives and their family planning would have been different. Maybe there's some parallel universe where it happened that way, and it would be neat to see how things turned out, but those are such radical changes that there's just no way to speculate.
My father likes to tell this story about me: Mouseferatu was a really easy baby. As long as he got food and sleep, he was fine1. After I was born, my mother told my father, before we'd even left the hospital, "This one's different. This one's obstinate2." My father was like, "she's only a few days old! How can you possibly know this?" And my mother said, "I can tell."
Temperament displays pretty early. Mine was evident at just a few days. David was alive for a few days. What was his temperament like? Until earlier today, it had never even occurred to me to ask. I have no intention of asking my parents: it's been almost 40 years, and chances are that between the damage and the attempted treatment there would have been very little opportunity for display. But all this time I've been thinking of David as someone who existed only in potentia, and it's a little shocking to think that no, he was actual. Not fully developed or fully realized, but still fully real.
1Clearly, not much has changed.
2 See 1