WOULD ANYBODY CARE?
What if I had not been born would I be here? What if I had been born would I be there? What if neither had happened where would I be and would anybody care? Would the unlikely likeness of me matter anyway? Have a nice day, people would say, and be on their way.
The sun would still rise with no surprise and set each night with fading light, everything would be wrong or right and there would be another someone to fight for what was good or bad, eat bread someone else had sliced and drink wine someone else had poured and go to bed and bored another someone else to sleep.
I would be a realistic statistic, a non-existent being not seeing what I now can see, not being what I now might be, not taking pleasure in just being me. Would that spot on the street where I should meet another me be waiting for another someone to appear and be there to fill the void? Would that someone be annoyed and check the clock on the tower noting that another hour had passed and then seeing me and sigh "At last" and another evening with my son would have begun that only we two could share and would anyone really care that we were there?
My mind wanders as I ponder these impossible possibilities in the hospital hall where all expectant fathers wait in anticipation for the population to grow one by one with each new daughter or each new son screaming and streaming into life.
All this said, what if all but one had been born and that one was torn from mother's womb to face the gloom that followed the worthless birth of a child born dead instead of what was anticipated? What if the parents to be had waited to mate another day, another night, would everything have turned out right? That might have happened, might have not. But they mated in haste and what they got was a waste, an insult to the cult of life.
The husband sighed, the wife cried out in agony. I died and would never be that someone who waited for a son, that someone who might have been my progeny.
The sun would still rise with no surprise and set each night with fading light, everything would be wrong or right and there would be another someone to fight for what was good or bad, eat bread someone else had sliced and drink wine someone else had poured and go to bed and bored another someone else to sleep.
I would be a realistic statistic, a non-existent being not seeing what I now can see, not being what I now might be, not taking pleasure in just being me. Would that spot on the street where I should meet another me be waiting for another someone to appear and be there to fill the void? Would that someone be annoyed and check the clock on the tower noting that another hour had passed and then seeing me and sigh "At last" and another evening with my son would have begun that only we two could share and would anyone really care that we were there?
My mind wanders as I ponder these impossible possibilities in the hospital hall where all expectant fathers wait in anticipation for the population to grow one by one with each new daughter or each new son screaming and streaming into life.
All this said, what if all but one had been born and that one was torn from mother's womb to face the gloom that followed the worthless birth of a child born dead instead of what was anticipated? What if the parents to be had waited to mate another day, another night, would everything have turned out right? That might have happened, might have not. But they mated in haste and what they got was a waste, an insult to the cult of life.
The husband sighed, the wife cried out in agony. I died and would never be that someone who waited for a son, that someone who might have been my progeny.
posted by Ed Weiland at 10:30 AM
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