Bread
My first memory was anger. I came online in the back of my mom’s closet the day my brother was born, engulfed in the smell of leather and dry-cleaned perfume. How could my parents bring another tiny life into the world, when here I was, fully intact and now fully conscious? All they had to do was root around the closet to find me, like dust-encrusted blouse rediscovered with newfound appreciation.
My second angriest memory was the day my other brother was born. This time I could act on it. I finally mastered my opposable thumbs and started really leaning in to my original sin. I climbed into the cabinet under my mom’s bathroom sink and kicked out all her toiletries in an Aveeno avalanche. My parents didn’t have any more kids.
My memories of my grandpa are stuck in syrup. He taught me how to say “eat my balls” in Italian. He wanted me to own a racehorse someday. He spoke with a perpetual sniffle, saying “pepperoni” like “bebberoni.” He had a lot of earwax and a lot of tweed. He told me, “you should never have to pay for a cup (bay for a bup) of coffee.” The amount of Q-tips and styrofoam bank coffee cups in my wake confirm that I am of his blood.
On the day my youngest brother was born, my grandpa took us to IHOP. When we got home, he made us waffles. “Alright, we gotta go to the hosbital,” he said, abruptly ending the daylong breakfast tour.
I don’t have to remember the rest of the day, because it was documented in pre-smartphone-era home video, a popular 1990s film genre typically shot, directed and produced by beaming dads experimenting with the zoom function on their new camcorders. You can identify the genre by the narrative element, “Smile and wave, honey! You’re on camera!” Another hallmark is 20 to 30 minutes of turbulent footage of the floor, sky, or both, followed by the conventional phrase, “Was I recording this whole time?”
Here’s what the camcorder remembered.
My brother and I waddle apprehensively and distractedly down a hospital hallway, decorated according to 90s regulations with coral wallpaper and forest green and cream accents. We reach the threshold of the room and the camera pans over our Portobello heads to our baby bella faces.
“Are you guys ready to meet your little brother?” asks my dad, through an off-camera mustache.
My brother breaks into a run, plopping down on the bed beside my mom, who is cradling a newborn in her arms and looks beat — almost like she just gave birth to a fetus that she carried in her womb for nine months. My brother locks eyes on our new littermate, cocking his head from side to side like a dog hearing a high-pitched noise. His gaze moves to the “It’s a Boy!” cigar on the hospital tray. He picks it up and tries to shove it into our little brother’s mouth.
“Hey baby! Want a cigarette?
His voice is so raspy that you’d suggest my parents double check the back of his pack of candy cigarettes.
The camera pans to my grandpa, already reading the Wall Street Journal in the corner like he’s been there for hours.
My brother continues to take in the scene. “Mommy, why you have no pants on?”
My mom wraps a laugh in a sigh.
The camera pans back to me, still in the doorway. It was a pretty cute phase for me and I feel compelled to say that because most of my childhood was not. I approach the bed tiny Ked after tiny Ked. The room inflates for a sweet sibling moment. As I get closer, my mom’s smile widens on her beet red (no offense) face. My grandpa even looks up from the paper. I keep walking. Right past the bed to a piece of bread on the tray beside it.
“Is that bread?”
The answer is irrelevant; I eat it.
Babies and bread are hard to tell apart. They’re warm, soft and often crusty (no offense to everyone who was once a baby). People like how they smell and they tend to have the same effect on a woman’s midsection. There are a lot of them at Olive Garden and people carry them under their arms sometimes. They’re vital to the continuation of civilization.
I have always chosen bread and will, for the foreseeable future.
