Beautiful Babies...

My brother was an ugly baby.

That's part of our family lore. My oldest brother was an ugly baby. And not just that but it scandalized my Aunt Dorothy that my mother would say he was ugly. My mom would tell the story and she would say, "Dorothy would get so mad. 'All babies are beautiful!' she'd say. And I'd tell her, oh no they aren't. He was an ugly baby."

Now my siblings and I loved this story. Well, all of my siblings except for my oldest brother of course. But the rest of us loved it.

My mother would also say that she was sure part of why Dorothy was so scandalized was because she hadn't been able to have children of her own. And she'd say that that might be true but it didn't stop him from being an ugly baby.

My brother Mark was a beautiful baby. And well behaved. Quiet. Calm. Curious about the world from the start, always watching. Mom said she wasn't sure if he was so quiet because John (the ugly baby in question) was so loud or if he would have been quiet anyway. I always wondered if her recollection of Mark was tinged by how young he died. He was never a troublesome teenager. He was like 6 or 7 (I can never remember exactly and though I'm sure I have it somewhere I haven't gone looking) and so was at that age where, in my opinion, kids are super great. Old enough to have really distinct interesting personalities and viewpoints, young enough to want to tell you about them.

But either way, John was an ugly baby, Mark was a beautiful baby. Jeff was also ugly but only because he looked like he'd been in a prize fight and lost the prize. He was a month overdue and breach so they had to turn him in the womb then they had to break his collarbone to get him out of the birth canal. So my mother would say he looked rough, but he had a rough start of things so it made sense.

My sister Susan was beautiful. Born with a full head of long black hair. Which all fell out shortly there after and came back in blonde. But at birth she already had long hair and was thus beautiful.

I don't know if I was ugly or beautiful. She never said. My guess is that means I was ugly but it's probably that she doesn't really know. I tried my best to kill her on the way out. Grabbed a handful of her insides and took them with me. She hemorrhaged and could easily of bled out. Which the doctors had warned her that having any more kids would probably kill her, but they had warned her of that when Jeff was born and she got pregnant three more times after that (a miscarriage, my sister, then me) so clearly she wasn't much of a listener.

I don't know about my two older sisters either. My oldest sister, the oldest child in our family, died right after birth, and the next sister between Mark and Jeff died within days of her birth. The only thing I know about how they looked is what a casket for an infant looks like. Those are the only family pictures. My mother would speak of them in what ifs, not in what they looked like at birth. I don't blame her. She could say that John was an ugly baby but had the bluest eyes you'd ever seen and they stayed that blue unlike a lot of babies. Or that Jeff had such a rough start that it made sense he grew up to have such a kind heart. Or that Susan was beautiful as a baby and it just shows you can't judge a book by it's cover... kidding, I'm kidding. She was pretty all through her childhood with thick blonde hair they would style in long sausage rolls curls. A not insignificant reason why Mom cut my hair short and kept it that way. No way was she fighting another child to style their hair. Which, good call, my stick straight hair would have never held those curls. But she could only speak of Marsha and Marcia in what ifs.

What would our family have been like if the older two girls had survived? How would John's life have changed if Mark hadn't been killed? John and Mark were incredibly close. Best friends. John will say to this day that he never got over it and it happened over 60 years ago.

I always think if the older three children had lived there would be a good chance I would not have been born. She might have taken the doctor's orders to heart and not have more children after Jeff. It would have been a really full house at that point. Though, as they would tell me way too much for my comfort, I was proof that a condom is not always an effective form of birth control so maybe not. Maybe I would just have had three more living siblings.

Who might or might not have been ugly babies.

For the record, I thought Katie was the most beautiful baby. Long eyelashes and long hair at birth. Her little curls poking out from under the cap the nursery gave her. She was adorable.