Sipping Life in Non-Lethal Portions

2.

 "The stork has brought a little peach!"  the nurse said with an air.  "I'm mighty glad,"  the mother said.,  "He didn't bring a pear."  ~ Anonymous Toast

Lee's birth day, or at least, the day Lee decided it was time to be born, pretty much set the pace for the rest of her life.  She came knocking at the door late, in a hurry and at a most inconvenient moment.  Her mother set the pace for their relationship immediately.  She ignored Lee.  Lee would have to wait until her mother was good and ready to open the door.

Missing her arrival date by three days, Lee had blown her opportunity for a warmer welcome.  She was now forced to wait in a line along with her mother--something Lee would go to great lengths to avoid in the future.  Had Lee known that she was forced to wait in line because her father drank away the rent money, she would have waited seething with anger and disgust.

Her mother, on the other hand, although feeling both emotions, held firm to her view of how a lady should act in polite society.  Yet, not one to suffer in silence, Lee's mother decided to blur the line of acceptable public conversation.  She calmly and casually mentioned to the man in line next to her that she hoped her baby would not be born in a welfare office.  Allowing just a hint of her discomfort to show on her face, she pushed the man's alarm button, which instantly sounded out of his mouth.  Like Moses and the red sea, Lee's mother's words miraculously parted the line and removed all obstacles in her way.  Everything her mother set out to achieve that day, she achieved, and in record time. And then, when her mother was ready for Lee to be born, she was.

From that day on, Lee could not manage time.  Unlike her siblings, who had all been born on the exact same day at the end of each of their respective months, she was born on the first day of the month.  The difference could have been slight had she been born minutes earlier.  But, by the time she arrived, the clock had struck out midnight, and a new day, month and season was in place.  She would later observe, her lateness was not her fault--that forces beyond her control had held her up.  Whether it be her mother, circumstances, or some entity with a cause, these forces would continue to hold Lee up throughout much of her life.

Lee's inability to keep of track of time was not aided much by clocks.  Whether she used a windup clock or an electrical clock, some mishap would occur.  The spring would seize up or the power would go out.  More often, she set the a.m. to p.m. mistakenly or unknowingly unplugged the clock.  If clockmakers wanted to create the perfect alarm clock, the key to their success would be obtained by observing Lee's total failure at using clocks as a means of being on time.

It did not help that Lee was born under the sign of the twins.  Not identical twins--two cosmic presences for the price of one, both working to make life easier with their common purpose and combined strength.  No.  Lee was born in the shadow of twins who were the definition of polarity--extremes, conflicting and contradicting, east and west, night and day, yes and no.  With the twins expressing opposite views on everything, Lee was torn between the two, and she found it hard to commit to anything.  She was constantly torn between emotions, options and ideas.  This left  Lee indecisive, often confused and, at times, immobolized.  So for a good deal of her life, with a foot set precariously on each side, Lee wobbled.