essay
Desiree Conway
November 19, 2014
ENGL 102-12
Narrative Essay
HWRC Spells Love
I am sitting across the table from the most gorgeous boy I have ever laid eyes on.
With dark hair the color of old wood, lovingly polished over the years, the messy locks soft like silk, his eyes sitting large and long-lashed in a flawless if somewhat serious face, the irises the same rich brown as his hair. He is tall, a little gangly, his body trying to figure out where to place his legs and arms in the confines of the table with all the grace of a baby giraffe. Looking at this boy makes me smile and I can’t help but be entranced by this gangly boy who is inhaling his cheese pizza like it is the last slice he will ever get, and I remember how different he is from when I’d met him a decade before, me on my second decade and he a squalling red thing that my parents surprised me with.
As I look into the face of my ten year old brother calmly eating his pizza and chatting about the things he was into I think back to one of the many unforgettable moments that my baby brother has delivered in ten years: a moment of connection that seared the little boy before me into my heart the rest of my lives to come.
I was on the cusp of twenty when my mother brought my little brother into the world. At the time I did not see the point to him as I already had a younger brother, Luke, a sulky high schooler that was four years younger than me. I was okay with the arrangement as I had been four when Luke came along and as such I did not really remember life pre-Luke. He just simply was. We had grown up together and I loved him very much even though when we fought it was like two nations going to war.
My parents however, decided that they would change all that. At forty two years of age my mother sprung my baby brother on me like a particularly clever hunter springing a trap, only the trap was in the form of a little boy that was to be named Harry William-Robert Conway (the two middle names after both my grandfathers respectively). Trapped. Forever. The bane of my existence leeching life from my mother like a parasite. I was secretly (and sometimes not so secretly) horrified. I saw endless moments of spit up and getting peed on and worse and smelly diapers and screaming like a little banshee come to take the souls of the recently departed to their final resting place. All the typically terrifying and cliché things that heralded a new baby making their mark on the world. I saw life as I knew it to be over.
I was not wrong.
My parents needed my help in a large way with the new monster demanding everything in the universe and then some. King Henry the Eighth would have been proud. All Harry did was eat, sleep and go through diapers at an alarming rate. I found myself wondering how it was feasible that my little brother was still alive after the amount of waste coming out of such a small body. Surely he needed some of that? Surely that could not be normal? What was more, his head was lopsided and for a time we wondered if he would have to sleep in a helmet to keep his head even. He wasn’t even pretty, just pink and half bald with a lopsided head that demanded the combined efforts of my mother, my grandmother, my father and me.
Some thousand diaper changes later, half of which I am pretty sure he saved it all up for me on purpose, I had a moment of true awakening. I was sitting in a chair in the living room of my family’s seventies style ranch house, watching television. My mother and father sat on the couch and Harry sat in his little bouncy walker thing and I do not remember the specifics, only at some point I started laughing. For some strange reason, Harry joined me and the two of us just looked at each other, brother and sister, laughing hysterically, the sound of baby laughter like the sweetest of church bells ringing in my ears as this little baby looked into my eyes, with trust and amusement and even joy. My father and mother were laughing as well, wondering what was so funny and my father said something that to this stay still strikes me:
“She brings him such joy.”
I think that was when my heart truly melted and I fell in love with the world’s most beautiful boy.
November 19, 2014
ENGL 102-12
Narrative Essay
HWRC Spells Love
I am sitting across the table from the most gorgeous boy I have ever laid eyes on.
With dark hair the color of old wood, lovingly polished over the years, the messy locks soft like silk, his eyes sitting large and long-lashed in a flawless if somewhat serious face, the irises the same rich brown as his hair. He is tall, a little gangly, his body trying to figure out where to place his legs and arms in the confines of the table with all the grace of a baby giraffe. Looking at this boy makes me smile and I can’t help but be entranced by this gangly boy who is inhaling his cheese pizza like it is the last slice he will ever get, and I remember how different he is from when I’d met him a decade before, me on my second decade and he a squalling red thing that my parents surprised me with.
As I look into the face of my ten year old brother calmly eating his pizza and chatting about the things he was into I think back to one of the many unforgettable moments that my baby brother has delivered in ten years: a moment of connection that seared the little boy before me into my heart the rest of my lives to come.
I was on the cusp of twenty when my mother brought my little brother into the world. At the time I did not see the point to him as I already had a younger brother, Luke, a sulky high schooler that was four years younger than me. I was okay with the arrangement as I had been four when Luke came along and as such I did not really remember life pre-Luke. He just simply was. We had grown up together and I loved him very much even though when we fought it was like two nations going to war.
My parents however, decided that they would change all that. At forty two years of age my mother sprung my baby brother on me like a particularly clever hunter springing a trap, only the trap was in the form of a little boy that was to be named Harry William-Robert Conway (the two middle names after both my grandfathers respectively). Trapped. Forever. The bane of my existence leeching life from my mother like a parasite. I was secretly (and sometimes not so secretly) horrified. I saw endless moments of spit up and getting peed on and worse and smelly diapers and screaming like a little banshee come to take the souls of the recently departed to their final resting place. All the typically terrifying and cliché things that heralded a new baby making their mark on the world. I saw life as I knew it to be over.
I was not wrong.
My parents needed my help in a large way with the new monster demanding everything in the universe and then some. King Henry the Eighth would have been proud. All Harry did was eat, sleep and go through diapers at an alarming rate. I found myself wondering how it was feasible that my little brother was still alive after the amount of waste coming out of such a small body. Surely he needed some of that? Surely that could not be normal? What was more, his head was lopsided and for a time we wondered if he would have to sleep in a helmet to keep his head even. He wasn’t even pretty, just pink and half bald with a lopsided head that demanded the combined efforts of my mother, my grandmother, my father and me.
Some thousand diaper changes later, half of which I am pretty sure he saved it all up for me on purpose, I had a moment of true awakening. I was sitting in a chair in the living room of my family’s seventies style ranch house, watching television. My mother and father sat on the couch and Harry sat in his little bouncy walker thing and I do not remember the specifics, only at some point I started laughing. For some strange reason, Harry joined me and the two of us just looked at each other, brother and sister, laughing hysterically, the sound of baby laughter like the sweetest of church bells ringing in my ears as this little baby looked into my eyes, with trust and amusement and even joy. My father and mother were laughing as well, wondering what was so funny and my father said something that to this stay still strikes me:
“She brings him such joy.”
I think that was when my heart truly melted and I fell in love with the world’s most beautiful boy.