First two Delays of my life

serste (50)in #art • 6 years ago (edited)

Words and images by @serste

So, delays.

I will never know if I truly was that promising brilliant child my parents were so proud of.

The truth is, I was lucky: my father was the older brother, and although the family tradition would have him waiting for his young sister to marry first, Nature made a point, and there I was.
Born in perfect condition, white and clean, red-haired.
The clans (families) from which my parents came from are both poor ones: southern Italy's peasants with no interest to change their harsh dialect for the Official Italian Language.
My parents met each others for chance during my father's mandatory militar service, and married soon after. I was born from an happy young couple, living in a beautiful (if extremely poor and damned) place.
Everything went quite fine for the first four years, then it came the first, big Delay: my brother.

Struggled pregnancy, preternatural born, complications.
And I was super-excited to meet him!

I think I don't fully realise, after all this years and experience, what is like to have a model of brother different from mine.
Mine, it arrived at home one sunny day, he was very beautiful and tiny, and I loved him instantly.
Sometimes after I understood that there were issues with his legs and hands, and it would be quite difficult to make him climb trees as I'd liked to.
Frankly, I didn't really mind having to assist him in the first years (and after) of his life. It taught me a lot about humbleness, reality (the one full of stairs and pitiful eyes) and resilience, but I keep asking myself what my life would have been if my mother had followed her Plan.

She fought to study, against the odds she made it, to run away from her mad mother. She suffered a lot. In the seventies, she was a feminist, and sang in a folk band. When she met my father, she was young and on her way to freedom, and she had it all planned: a child, just one, better female, better redhead.
Less than a year after, I was born, but she didn't pursue the plan.
Why? Social constrictions, first: this story took place when honour killings were still tolerated in Italy; women's freedom of choice was still an opaline ghost.

Inertia played a huge role too, I think.
We had to move to Northern Italy in order to find better hospitals for my bro, and this is the second Delay.
If you've ever had the chance to visit Italy in its full, you might have noticed the variety of cultures scattered in it: the 1200 km trip to my new home was an incredible adventure. The place was horrible, but my brother and I were already a team , and we survived.
We survived to our parents' divorce too: my father never really made peace with the born of a defective child.