by Tamra
Carraway
My youngest brother, Nathan, became
a father three years ago. This momentous occasion forever sealed his
fate as favorite child and forgave all past sins by bestowing my parents
with a grandchild. Not unlike the birth of a future monarch could this
delivery have been more eagerly anticipated.
My brother is one of the top five
Michael Jordan memorabilia collectors in the United States. If Michael
Jordan's face ever adorned it - my brother has it; whether it be a box
of Wheaties, a pair of flannel pajamas or a '85-'86 season Chicago Bull
rookie card. Therefore, when his wife Kathleen found out she was indeed
pregnant, there was only one clear choice for a name. His daughter Jordan
was born nine months later.
Because of bizarre timing, I was
the only person present in the waiting room the day of her birth. My
father was out of town, my other brother with him; my husband and stepparents
at work; my mother behind the scenes bossing the nurses around. I sat
amid empty styrofoam coffee cups and outdated magazines in a room with
a mural of rushing water and playing children painted on one wall. Any
rustle in the nursery that lay pristine behind the plate glass was cause
for me to rise halfway out of my chair in expectation.
When they rounded the corner, I
saw my brother before I noticed the baby in his arms. My brother who
is so awkward in his size, so graceless and so unsure of what to do
with hands, now walked proudly to the window where I stood on the other
side and held his daughter up for her eyes to meet my own.
I stood alone in that waiting room
with its flickering fluorescent light and tapped on the window to divert
my brother's eyes from his child. He looked at me and through the glass,
I mouthed these words: You did good.
There are moments in our lives that
you find yourself having fallen in love, without being pushed, without
so much as having felt the tumble of falling headfirst. You stare, entranced,
at what is front of you and how completely and suddenly, nothing is
the same.
You feel like riding with the windows
rolled down. You feel absolved. You feel like a million tiny stars are
shining down upon your head. It feels like coming up for air. In my
brother's case - he felt hungry.
After the footprints were stamped
and a million pictures were taken, he kissed his wife good-bye (leaving
her amid the buzzing and cooing of her mother and mother-in-law), and
went home. He took a shower, put fresh sheets on the bed, and collected
the mail. And then he made dinner.
He withdrew four perfect eggs from
the refrigerator. He cracked each one slowly, careful not to introduce
any shell to the satiny liquid. To that he added what he could find,
finally pouring it all into a pan sizzling with clarified butter. As
he scrambled the eggs, he called his friends and bragged that he had
a new girl to sweep into his arms.
By the time he sat down to eat,
it was late and the house had fallen quiet around him. I have to believe
that all of the men who came before him sat at that silent table with
him. His father, brother, and grandfathers now long dead - a lineage
of DNA that had passed from man to man to daughter. Coursing through
their veins the genetic predisposition to lie, startling blue eyes,
an extraordinary physical strength; an intolerance of cruelty, a talent
for swan dives.
Nathan washed his plate and put
it away. Whistling, and with keys in hand, he walked out of the house,
the porch light left on in his wake. He stopped on his way back to the
hospital only once. Ten minutes after entering the store, he emerged
with a tiny Michael Jordan emblazoned basketball in his hands, unsure
no longer.
©
