(Photo: Jill Sauve on Unsplash)
They named her Annum.
For being born just as the year turned time onto its head
To start anew.
Just as the numbers tumbled from the duos to the singles
To the very first
Of firsts.
A new beginning.
Just as she was,
Finally,
For them.
For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Year in 46 words
He was born on a blustery night to a woman who huddled on the exposed slopes with naught but the protection of three wide backs to block the worst of the wind. The men crouched, arms linked and heads down, their eyes averted from what was taboo to watch, as they hummed the low sounds of incantations meant to shield the woman and babe from the demons and their own ears from the muffled cries.
There was no midwife.
The other woman had died not a full moon prior. It was a bad omen.
There was no spirit-guide. Their leader, too, had died.
Bad omens, all.
There was only the woman, panting desperately in the dark. And the three of them: One of whom in whose hearth she’d grown, one whose hearth she shared, one who’d preceded her in her mother’s womb. And a girl-child of barely eight winters. Pale and shivering and wide-eyed, she knelt before the woman, one hand on the swollen belly, another cradling the opening for the magic and terror that no man was allowed to look upon. But she would. She was too young. But there was no one else who could.
As the night stretched and the panting shortened, he was born.
By morning, they moved on.
A fresh mound under a rock marked the space where the smell of blood still lingered. The men had dug the hole, even though it was women’s work. A concession to their circumstance. They could not wait till the girl, or woman, gathered sufficient strength for the task. It was paramount that one put distance between oneself and the afterbirth, lest the demons seek to lug the babe back into the dark. The mother, too, sometimes.
They left all that behind.
He lived his first days in almost the same darkness he’d been made in. Cocooned inside his mother’s wraps, lips close enough to her breast to suckle, rocked by the same thunder and gurgle of her heartbeat and innards.
Sometimes, much later in years, he’d remember the indistinguishable. How inside and out did not differ by much other than air and hunger and the momentary cold that blanketed him when he was whipped out to be held above the ground to release his waste.
He might’ve stayed cocooned for longer had they not found the cave.
The old man saw it first. A black tooth in the mountain-side. Large enough to fit.
They waited two days to approach it. Demons have been known to skulk in the back of dark hollows, waiting to pounce. They were too few to risk it. Let alone with a helpless morsel who couldn’t even cling.
When nothing bigger than a ferret emerged from the entry, and when hares were spotted munching languidly nearby, they knew that whatever demons might have lived there once, had since long gone.
They brought an ember to the cave. And stones for a hearth. And moss and boughs for bedding.
The girl carried water from the spring. The woman made the tea and cooked the grain from her ceremonial parcel. They ate. They drank. They slept.
By morning the men came for the baby.
They held his naked, squalling form, indignant in the cold exposure, and passed him from man to man at the entry.
His life-force squealed vitality. His lungs breathed their collective previous misfortunes to the wind. His face, first reddened then purple with rage, summoned the sun to rise and fall. Someplace a wolf returned the howl.
It was a good omen.
They called him New Born. The reincarnation of Born, the spirit-guide they’d lost along with what safety they’d had where they came from. This New Born was a cameo. He was their future. Their hope in this new home.
Photo: Arlette Loeser
There’s a little
Big toe
Twirling free
On the go,
As the other
In tow
Hopes its own
Sock
To throw.
For Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: Hands, feet, or paws
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com
“We’ll be okay,” he promised, even though he had never cared for a baby, let alone one quite so young.
It didn’t matter. He’d google it. He’d even call Aunt Edna if he had to.
For now, there was nothing to do but reassure Margo, who looked as if a semitrailer had gone over her once and came back for seconds. He had no idea what bleeding in a new mother meant, but he didn’t think it could be something to ignore, even as he simultaneously tried hard to not imagine the exact nature of it.
Still she argued with him till he said, “what if you give whatever this is to the baby?”
She let him call the paramedics. She agreed to call her mom.
“There’s breast milk in the freezer!” Margo remembered as EMS wheeled her out.
He was curious enough to head straight for the kitchen to check it out. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for till he spotted a few small zippy bags in the freezer’s door. They had a date scrawled on with a sharpie and contained an off-white substance. Didn’t look like milk. Well, maybe like a watered down version of ‘milk’ from the vegan aisle.
He stood there and wondered how the milk got from the freezer to the baby’s tummy. Do you cook it? Does it get ruined if you microwave it? Isn’t it supposed to be in a bottle? He hoped Margo’s mom will arrive before he had to figure that out.
He shut the freezer door but his mind would not shut the topic. How did the breast milk get into the bag in the first place? Did people sell this stuff? Was it hers? How does one milk a breast? Do you even call it “milking”? His mind conjured images too odd to contemplate. He wasn’t sure he liked realizing that women’s breasts had … um … practical uses.
The baby whimpered and he jumped to pick her up from the swinging car-seat-like-thing she was strapped into. Took him a good two minutes to figure out the clasp. Fort Knox, this thing. By then the whimper became full on red-in-the-face howl. He tried not to panic. Did babies normally get this loud or was the baby sick? He thought of Margo’s bleeding. Would he have to check, you know, the diaper area?
He bounced the baby lightly against his chest and she burped and dribbled some off-white liquid that looked like the breast milk in reverse. It wet his shirt but he didn’t care because the baby quieted. He wasn’t sure whether to keep bouncing her or not. What if she burped up more and ended up losing all the food in her tummy? He settled on a sort of light jiggly dance. Seemed to help. When he peeked down he saw the baby’s eyes had closed. The tiny mouth was closed, too.
A huge yawn stretched his.
He’d just come home from a double shift at the construction site and was dreaming of bed when he remembered that he’d promised Margo he’d check on the stairway light. He knocked on his neighbor’s door to let her know it was just a faulty light-switch, and was alarmed at how awful she looked when she opened it.
Margo rented the one-bedroom above the studio apartment he liked to think of as “his bachelor pad” though it was more like college-dorm-meet-thrift-store-shabby. Margo had already been pregnant when she’d moved in, and he’d felt a combination of protectiveness, shyness, and admiration for the young woman. Her mother had given him a critical once-cover and a ‘best not mess with my kid’ look when she’d come for the birth. He cowed under her glare and tried to stay out of their way. He hoped he passed muster when Margo’s mother found him making room for the stroller in the small landing. She didn’t say much, but she was marginally less glacial afterwards.
He’d been relieved when Margo’s mom left. Now he couldn’t wait for her to return.
Another yawn. He wasn’t sure how far away Margo’s mom lived. An hour? Two? More?
Margo had left her mother’s number on a sticky note, but he didn’t want to call. Told himself she had enough to worry about, though in truth he just didn’t want her to think he was as inept as he felt.
I did get the baby to fall back asleep, though, he thought defensively …
The third yawn threatened to swallow half the baby.
He lowered himself gingerly onto the couch. Hoped the baby stays quiet. She did. Good. He’d just close his eyes for a moment.
***
He woke to pots and pans and the smell of eggs and coffee. There was a slight weight on his chest. He stared down to see a downy head peeking from under a brown blanket.
“You were both fast asleep,” Margo’s mom manifested, apron-clad and a sudsy sponge in one hand.
He blinked.
She smiled, and he noted to himself that she didn’t look half as intimidating as he’d remembered.
“How’s Margo?” he chanced.
“She’s stable,” her smile thinned, with worry, not critic. “They gave her blood and are keeping her for observation but I can bring Ella to visit her later this afternoon.”
As if she knew she was the topic of the conversation, the baby stirred and stretched a small fist at his jaw. Her eyes opened and she contorted her face, ready to cry.
“I’ll take her,” Margo’s mom put the sponge down and wiped her hand on her apron before reaching for the baby. “Did she eat?”
He shook his head. Still a bit dazed and surprisingly disappointed at the loss of the small heft over his heart.
“I’ll make her a bottle.” Margo’s mom nuzzled the baby’s neck, and tilted her head toward a phone on the coffee table. The smile was back. “I took a photo, by the way. Of you and Ella. Was too sweet to not share.”
For Linda’s SoCS challenge: Yawn
Photo: Zaid Abu Taha on Pexels.com
She is early in birth
And early in breath,
Independent in all.
She’s come forth barely cooked
But is here even so
Stubbornly grabbing hold
Ravenous in her howls,
In a world just a tad
Unprepared
For her life-hungry spirit
And determined
Big soul.
[Dedicated to all the little ones who arrive exactly at the right time … for them. … and to all who work with them, to make it the best possible time and outcome.]
For the dVerse Poetry Challenge: Early in 44 words
For all who celebrate Easter
Who praise spring’s freedom
Rebirth
Renewal
Restoration of new hopes and
Fresh possibilities.
May it be a day of close connection
Of bonding
Great fun
Much affection.
May it a day to celebrate
New life
In all its forms
The delicate
The Playful
The endlessly adorable beginnings
Of little ones commencing
A first path
And of the new paths
For us all
Unfurling alongside.
tucked away in the mountains
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