Carter’s Chatter

One year and 21 days before I was born, my parents lost the first child in our family. Mom planned an anniversary party that day for her in-laws. In her haste, she caught her heel in a crack in front of the A&P store, fell and started to miscarry, but she didn’t tell anyone until later that night, after the fun. She told too late. Whether immediate rest would have prevented the tragedy is uncertain. What was certain to me, even at a young age was the regret Grandma, who had lost her first child, felt. I never heard my parents voice their feelings, but I knew the story before I was ten.

            “Was it a boy or a girl, Mom?” I asked.

“It wasn’t old enough to tell,” she said, but something about her demeanor warned me not to ask any more questions, so I never did.

Later, I watched Mom and her sisters play a game that was supposed to answer questions truthfully. To play the game correctly, a person had to believe that some psychic power made it work. I don’t know why my mother played it because she didn’t believe in such hocus pocus. I think she chose to humor her younger sister.

“Go in the other room and play,” she said. I didn’t want to be shooed away, but I went into the dining room where I could still hear. Almost.

Theoretically, when the questioner held a needle on a thread over the player’s wrist, the string swung one way for a yes answer and another for a negative one.

            “Your first child was a . . . ,” Aunt Patricia said. I couldn’t hear the last word, but I thought she said “girl” or maybe I hoped it. I had wanted an older brother.

“That’s not right,” Mom said, almost in a whisper.

“Did you know?” Aunt Shirley asked.

Mom’s whispered reply was lost in the din of the other children in the room. I decided that the lost child was the older brother I had always wanted, and I built the fantasies for a few years – especially since I had already decided that the younger brothers were “brats.”

            When I grew old enough to understand a few more details and I did the math, I realized that if that child had not been lost, I wouldn’t have existed. That information created a feeling of awe which said God chose me instead of him. Or God chose him first. I don’t know which. I questioned why and felt as if I had some responsibility that the first baby did not.

            If that were true, I don’t know what the responsibility is, yet I wonder sometimes and I ask: Have I fulfilled it? Is it still to come? Was there a special purpose? If so, I hope I have – or will – satisfy it.