[Sean] Hello, firstborn

Dear Sean,

I still have to sort of figure out what I want to say to you and how I want to arrange it, because my natural tendency is to just type a huge textwall and then complain when no one wants to read it. Best to convey the information in smaller bites. This will take time.

First off I wanted to say that I will probably write more to Althea than I do to you, but it won’t be because I don’t want to speak to you. It’ll be because I know her better, because my dumb ass didn’t let her grandmother walk out the front door with her when she was almost three. Occupational hazard. Not because I have any issues with you at all.

Not really knowing where to begin, I suppose I’ll start at the beginning. I’ve noticed a misconception or two from you.

First off, you weren’t born in Atlanta and you’re not from there. I think that when you first went to live with your grandmother, you and she divided your time between the Atlanta area and someplace in Florida. But you lived in Georgia before that, and you were too young to remember.

I lived in Savannah when I met your father. We met in early ‘95, were married within three months (probably more like two — mid-March, the 14th or 15th, and I can never remember which), and then I found out I was pregnant with you in maybe August or September or so. Your dad was the one who brought up the subject, because I’d been late for a while but too scared to say anything. He was surprisingly understanding, considering he’d already told me he didn’t want kids yet.

We talked over what to name you and, at that time, he believed he was half Irish (his mother has since told me she lied to him about who his father was) and so he wanted to name you Sean and then either his first or middle name. I thought, “Sean Michael?” and a few seconds later he said out loud, “What about Sean Michael?” We never could think of a girl’s name. Then we did the ultrasound scan and found out we didn’t need one.

(It was the opposite with your sister. Her dad and I worked out her name but could not agree on a boy’s name, and I didn’t get to see which she was on the scan. We had to wait til she was born.)

When your dad found out you were a boy he positively radiated Happy And Smug. I think he was 100% on the dad train then.

You were born at Fort Stewart, Georgia, right outside a town called Hinesville which was roughly half an hour or maybe 40 minutes away from Savannah. The hospital was called Winn Army Community Hospital and in fact it was my old workplace. I had been stationed at the medical company at Fort Stewart before moving to Hunter Army Airfield where I’d met your dad, and while at Winn I worked both in hospital admissions and in the outpatient records room on the other end of the hospital. When we checked out of the hospital after your birth, my old sergeant processed the paperwork. Pretty funny.

Not an everyday thing to have been born at one’s mom’s old workplace, I guess.

Big babies run in my family, right along with the tendency for type 2 diabetes (and that’s no coincidence), and I had trouble giving birth to you. The doctor — a big, burly guy, someone else I was aware of from my time working there — had to help get you out with a vacuum extractor. The vacuum extractor is billed as easier on the baby’s head than forceps are. I suppose it depends on how one defines “easy.” In the end he ripped your scalp, pulled your skull out of shape, and left you with a huge bruise on top of your head. You were not a happy camper. I was scared for you.

They wouldn’t even let me hold you at first. They assessed you, wrapped you up, showed you to me, and then whisked you off to the nursery. I had to walk all the way across the fourth floor of the hospital between my ward and your nursery, stopping once to rest halfway, just to see you. They wouldn’t let you room with me until they liked your oxygen numbers. That took a few days.

If you’d been born a few years later, they would have fitted you with a reshaping helmet for your skull bones. You didn’t get that at the time. I don’t know if you still have the flat place on the left side of the back of your head, but I’ve seen photos of your hair. It’s thick enough to hide it if it’s still there.

This is where we all lived while your dad was still stationed at Hunter. If the apartment office is still in the same place, our apartment was almost literally next door to that red awning. (We still had our cat Porkey at the time, he was allowed to go outside, and he hissed at the apartment manager one day.) We had started out in a different apartment, but next to the manager’s was where we were living when your dad got the orders to go to Fort Bragg.

Things hadn’t been 100% okay between him and me, but at the time I was the only one who knew that and at that time it was still entirely my fault. But we didn’t really start going downhill until we moved to North Carolina. I sometimes wonder how we’d have ended up if we had just stayed in Georgia.

Never gonna know now.

So anyway, that’s some of your beginning. I suppose this has been one of the bad things about me not being there. Your grandmother didn’t know the story and your dad wouldn’t have talked about any of it, now that I think about it. But I’ll share more as we go on.

I hope you are well. I love you.

Mom