From great violence burst that first guttural wail of life. Gurgling with fluid, peach fuzz slipped into gloved hands. Your head was still moulded by the birth canal as we fit your wee yarn cap. Your mama is a warrior; you’ll see her battle scar one day and will hardly believe that it was through this fine passage you slid into life, spluttering with indignation to have been woken so abruptly from your nap. How your papa squeezed your hand, gazing once more into his mother’s eyes. Time coiled past and present through downy curls.
You were so untouched by the world that you weren’t sure how to cry; your mouth opened and closed around warbles of sound. You were pruned as fingers after a long bath, for you’ve been floating these nine months.
How soon you’ll crawl, then run and climb. How soon these abstract splotches before you will morph into Mama and Papa, their shapes shifting through all the memories of your childhood, shrinking as you grow until you find one day that they were little more than children, the years long gone by. You will struggle to hold onto the last tendrils of a youth slipping ever further out of reach – but that is ages away, for a time when you have aged more than the caterpillar cocooned outside our window. How soon you will explore all your parents long to show you, will weather all they long to shelter you from, and the lifetime of today will be but one day of many.
Perhaps we’ll meet again under the glow of the operating room lights. You will hold your new world in your arms and will wonder that she has your father’s eyes, opening into this brief, shared glimpse of eternity. But for now you are bundled, a bundle of joy, delicate and blinking. What a beautiful day it is, this day I share with you.
Contributing Writer
Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine
Kristen Anderson is a medical student at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario class of 2026. In 2022, she graduated from Stanford University with a B.S. in computer science. She enjoys reading and going on walks in the woods in her free time. After graduating medical school, Kristen would like to pursue a career in Psychiatry.