We have had to retire Silas’s alien pajamas as his arms and legs are just too damn long. To commemorate this sad, untimely event, I have a written a short story in honor of Silas and his pajamas and his already formulating adventurous and mischievous ways.
I am putting a copy of this is his baby book along with all of his letters.
Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, I’m free at last!
(Yes, that means that I’ve finished all of my course work for this semester.)
Please stay tuned.
To all my readers! All ten of you! I ask your good thoughts and wishes!
I have been struggling through two Master’s courses that I despise with such passion that I have found myself scrubbing the poop from diaper liners as an alternative to homework.
Finally, the end has nearly come. It is my last week of class and I am battling with a research paper and seven cumulative essays about nothing but utter bull shit.
Never fear! The end is in sight! I’m in good health and can handle such maladies.
When I finish I hope to dazzle you with at one, maybe two!, insightful, witty, and tear-jerking posts per day! So, count your blessings and keep your fingers crossed.
Until then, please think of me.
Yours truly,
Emily Marjean
PS – If you are just tuning in, thank you!, and know that I am sarcastic and not conceited. Again, thank you. No, thank you. Seriously. Thanks.
Last week, a very dear friend of mine received some shocking news. Her parent’s home had burned to the ground. It had exploded. In the middle of the day. Something to do with a random bolt of lightning and an underground gas line. The flames taking everything, including their pets. Thank God, no one was hurt.
Before I get into what, if anything, barbies and birth defects have in common, I’d like to mention that I am sitting on my back deck, listening to the birds and gazing at two very luscious weeping cherry trees. I’ve just enjoyed a piece of Amish-raised organic chicken breast that I grilled a la Emily and topped with a puree of tomato, onion and cilantro (okay, salsa!) and some grated cheddar cheese. I am finishing off a glass of Newman’s finest Cabernet (not that impressive) and am watching the clouds jet across the evening sky. One looks like the Warner Brother’s Tasmanian Devil in a three-quarter spin. I’d almost forgot what it was like to name the clouds. I have a bad habit of keeping myself unnecessarily busy.
Maybe I should also mention how I am finding myself in this moment of reverie. This evening, my husband is playing a gig in a very reputable juke joint and Silas decided he wanted to go to bed early. Oh, the sweet silence of sitting solo! I can smell the fresh cut grass and hear the murmur of children in the distance. My Lord! What a wonderful world! (Even with the mosquitoes.)
So, on to barbies and birth defects.
When Silas was born, I noticed, almost immediately, that he had an unusual red lump on his neck about the size of a pea. It has the firmness of cartilage and is shaped like a snail’s shell or a curving fragment of the human ear. We were told by the hospital pediatrician and the resident pediatric surgeon that the bump was a leftover “gill”.
It turns out that the lump is not a gill– not really. It is a branchial cleft cyst. An embryonic birth defect.
I am, at best, a mediocre poet.
Less than mediocre. A non-poet. The converse of poet. The negative space that might exist if a poet was to implode or was sucked into a black hole or was acted upon by some terrific and terrifying laws of physics and mysticism. A stock broker.
