Series (Family): The Birth of Tippy Gnu

The First Trimester, Part 1: Mom and Dad

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This is the next installment of my autobiography, The Birth of Tippy Gnu.
To read the previous installment, click this link.
To start at the beginning, click this link.

The First Trimester,
Part 1:
Mom and Dad

My dad-to-be smooched my mom-to-be on her lips and cheek, then rolled over and was out in less than 60 seconds. Meanwhile, I’d just begun my journey, racing like a champ up the birth canal, against a host of strong and weak competitors.

He had a mistress, so the last thing he wanted was one of his racers to win the Golden Egg Award. No, he was planning to leave my mom when the time was right, and anymore kids would complicate things. That’s why he wore a rubber.

And that’s why I have to give credit to the Holy Trojans. If it wasn’t for that tiny little, unnoticed puncture, I wouldn’t be here right now to write this autobiography.

My mom suspected something was up. She’s the one who took a straight pin while he was at work, and poked a hole in the rubber. She connived that if only she could get pregnant and have another kid, maybe it would keep them together. Perhaps it would restore the flaming blue passion they once had for each other, that had gone the way of fading gray-orange coals.

They already had four kids, all born about a year-and-a-half apart. The last to be born was my brother, over two years earlier. By the time I’d open my eyes into this world, it would be over three years since the most recent child expanded this family. I would be the final entry. The afterthought. The last hope my siblings had for an unbroken-home upbringing.

It was 10:07 on a July 4th evening, when my dad-to-be climaxed and shot off his spectacular fireworks. My mom-to-be oohed and aahed, as is expected during a fireworks show. She had planned like a fox for this entire Independence Day holiday. She dropped her four kids, my siblings-to-be, off at the house of my grandparents-to-be. They were delighted for the opportunity to take their grandkids to a fireworks display.

Then she treated my dad-to-be to a candlelit dinner, gave him a back massage, and subserviently followed him to bed for the fulfillment of his wildest fantasies. Except for that fantasy where you have to swallow. That would not satisfy her plan to get pregnant.

They made their own fireworks show that Friday evening, July 4th, 1958.

At 5:00 the next morning, my dad-to-be woke up by force of habit. It was a Saturday, and he was off work for the weekend. He could have stayed in bed, but he knew he couldn’t get back to sleep.

So he slowly sat up, rubbed his eyes, slumped his shoulders, and sighed. The drug of sleep gradually lifted from his befogged brain, as a primordial shudder racked his mind. What challenges, what horrors, what hells awaited him today? he wondered, as we all sometimes wonder at these first moments of our day. At 5:03 AM, just as he was lugging his tired body up off the bed, to find the toilet and drain his bladder, I won the Golden Egg Award.

My dad blasted a fart after his first step. My sleeping mother briefly awakened, half-opening her eyelids, then dropped back off. Was it the cacophony of the fart that disturbed her awake, or was it the christening of life occurring that moment in her uterus? The romantic in me wants to believe the latter. But I suspect it was probably the former.

But what christening, really? My life has always been, and will always be. There was no new life starting up in her womb. It was old life. Eternal life. Life that had always been, but that was simply taking on a new form, a new direction, a new adventure. That was the only new life going on.

For as far back as I could remember, which was eternally, I had always been alive. That may be hard for mortals to comprehend, but when you’re in utero, you’re not like other mortals. You still remember the eternity that preceded you. And you possess many of the supernatural powers you had before conception.

The in utero experience is a transitional experience. Over the six to nine months of gestation, you transform from immortal to mortal. And from supernatural to natural. It’s a big change, and so it doesn’t happen in the blink of an eye. It takes time.

Come on back in a few days, or so, for the next installment of The Birth of Tippy Gnu, entitled, The First Trimester, Part 2: A Farewell.

Categories: Series (Family): The Birth of Tippy Gnu

122 replies »

  3. I hope you still have that pin your mom used – it’s the whole reason you were born to this family. I hope one of the installments shares your dad’s amazement that something like this could happen…

    Liked by 2 people

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  5. Wow Tippy. While I was not paying attention to the blogging world, you’ve been hammering out a new story feature … and what a compelling tale it is. Your own version fo the Big Bang 😀

    … now I’m off to read the first two instalments …

    Liked by 2 people

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