Shhh! Scribbler at Work

Pristine Christine

(prompt: birthday 12/1/2018)

Once upon a very long time ago there wasn't an old girl called Christine.

There was this no-name foetus kicking and shoving to get out of her mother into the world. How wonderful to be able to report she picked up a pencil before she could talk or walk. Wonderful... but ridiculous. In reality she was overly eager to start talking, and it's a moot point to imagine when she'll ever stop.

The mother wanted a replacement for the baby boy who had died in her arms. Secretly, she was also anticipating some delicious hours of non-sedated sleep, seeing as how the medication was mainly intended for her passenger, enabling her to some much-needed time-out.

The father wanted a footballer to be a star for the club where his father had been President for many years. The amount of movement clearly visible in his wife's large and swollen stomach gave him reason for great optimism. Her inability to sleep much at all due to the near constant activity taking place bolstered his hopes even higher.

Born over a decade earlier, the brothers and sister were hanging out for a new baby to lift the doom and gloom that hung like the blackest cloud over the whole family. Many people assumed the new babe was an accident. (Over the years, many more have come to the same conclusion - for different reasons.) Laughter was almost non-existent in that household - all too often a forced, unnatural kind of thing, fleeting and light as the breeze from a butterfly's wings.

The doctor was jubilant. He had advised the father to get the mother pregnant as soon as possible, to save her sanity after their loss. And it was all coming to fruition, way better than his most outlandish dreams for this worthy family. He shared his conviction with the parents-to-be that twins were the reason for this gross amount of movement. Admittedly, he'd only been able to pick up one heartbeat - but that was not so unusual - one babe could well be laying in front of the other.

An atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan in August, 1945, but it didn't have the personal repercussions of the bombshell that was dropped at Memorial Hospital when Christine was born. Just one baby - and a girl, to boot! Could the bomb and the babe have inspired the name of ... 'Baby Boomers'?

Heavily drugged to slow down the long-planned and well-rehearsed fast entrance, the mother's initial groggy response to the news was, "throw her out the window. I don't want a girl." I guess that was a 'Welcome to the World' of sorts, but not quite according to the Grand Plan.

They say the old Doc was so embarrassed by his gaggle of errors, he nearly did throw Christine out - hoping she'd be lost amongst all the other little rosebuds in the manicured garden below.

Ha! No chance when dealing with an Aries. Why wasn't he warned?