This is a draft version of a chapter from John Saye’s book, Longevity and Other Stories. If you are daring, why not subscribe to my newsletter (they come few and far between), and I’ll send you a PDF copy of the book?
I’m being born right there, in that room. The surgeons are performing an emergency c-section on my mother, and it’s not going well. She survives, as do I, but there’s a lot of scarring, and she takes a long time to recover. My father is a nervous wreck, not because he’s worried about me. I’m the youngest of three boys, and he’s learned to handle babies just fine, but the idea of losing my mother is terrifying to him. My aunts and uncles are pacing in the waiting room, and we’ve been in the operating room for quite a while now. I’m told later that I can’t possibly remember it, but I’ve been told the story so many times that I feel like I do, although it’s been more than what I consider a lifetime ago, much longer really.
It’s January 1st, 2000, at 12:10 am. I’m not by any stretch to claim the title of the New Year’s baby, but I’m born so close to midnight that it doesn’t matter. The lucky thing though, or maybe not, I’m not sure anymore, is that as a result, I’ve never had a problem knowing exactly how old I am. I have friends who can remember the year but can’t remember how old they are without a calculator these days, but for me, well… if I can tell what year it is, I know exactly how old I am.
The family is overjoyed to see me when my father can finally take some visitors, but Mom’s in a little more trouble still, and the doctors are working on her. I had some trouble with extra fluid in my lungs and that didn’t make anyone happy, but it passed quickly enough, and I was a hefty ten pounds and eleven ounces after they weighed me for the first time.
Stamps were taken of my feet, and my official name was recorded. It’s Jacob Evan Andersen. I’ve had it long enough. They pass me around a lot. I end up in first one grandmother’s hands, and then another for a while as my father finishes doing all the paperwork the hospital requires. A few minutes later and my mother is brought out. She’s not allowed to stand up for a while. There are two IVs in her, one with blood and one dripping with saline. She’s lost a lot, more than anyone thought she would, but she’s in good spirits.
She recovers just fine, and we’re only a couple of days in the hospital, back when that’s how long you stayed in a hospital for the birth.
It’s an interesting time to be alive. Lots of good movies, and television. The ebook revolution is just taking hold. People are trading the soft and familiar feel of paper books for the convenience of being able to carry them all with you at the same time. Is that a curse or a blessing? I haven’t figured that out yet. It’s already possible to carry every record album you own with you if you have a device with enough space, but people aren’t yet carrying all their favorite television shows and movies around with them all the time. I figure that’s not too far off.
The space program isn’t much to speak of. There are a few more flights to the international space station, something I remember more as a collection of tin cans strung together with chewing gum and wire. As a toddler and teenager, I heard that we once landed men on the moon, but that we found little, and nobody thought it would be much use to go back after a while. There were only so many rocks you could bring back before everyone was bored with it. I suppose innovation is always faster when you have an enemy to compete with.
A flood of relatives visited us in the hospital, but not as many as I expected. It was quite the party, though. I don’t think I let my parents sleep for the first six months I was alive. I had help. With two older brothers, I think we all gave them a run for their money. I saw Dad really lose it twice, but mostly, they were both so cool as we grew up.
At the end of our hospital stay, they wheeled my mother to the car, an old minivan, and we all transitioned in. You’d think we were getting the car packed to go on a vacation. There had to be fifteen large bags Dad had to pile into the back, and after all the kids were packed in, and strapped into the various car and booster seats, we were off, our first trip together as a family. (At least with me along for the ride.)
We’d later take the big trip to Disney World, and another one out to the Grand Canyon before Mom died, but the big one was the trek up into Alaska in recreational vehicles. Camping every night, campfires, marshmallows, and anything else you could get on a stick. Those were the days.
I have been nowhere that I could build a campfire for a while. I’ve been keeping a notebook forever. It seems like little snippets of what happens to me. I used to keep it all online as a blog, but I was tired of upgrading it all the time, and since it was just for me anyway, I kept it in various notebooks, on paper. If you had any idea what I have to go through to get notebooks made of paper and pens with real ink in them these days, well. You’ll know eventually. If you live as long as I have, anyway. Hell, if you’re old enough to have found this manuscript, you probably are. I did cave in a couple of years ago and send the older stuff to a scanning store. They tore all the old notebooks up and scanned every page, so at least when you’re looking through them, they all still look like paper.
Opens up like a book though, and the facing pages light up and show you where I was writing… Of course, you probably can’t read my old handwriting, can you?
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