#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream
b R O o K
My Brother's Birthday is January Blue
Each passing year, on the day of our birth
my mother would call, we counted on this
she would always be the first to wish us
Her fifth, our youngest, a brother, was born
January 11, it was Mumps season in our house
her OB insisted she be kept away
for seven days in the hospital she stayed
away protecting him from us
Every day she was absent I skipped
first grade, unwilling to be left out
of our gang - I didn't feel well at all - so when
our family doctor Gagliarty came to call
placed his cold clean palms against my glands
asked if I hurt I said yes in a softest voice
Mumps! he declared, the whole lot of them!
to our frazzled cousin who was filling in.
From my lie, I suffered days, days until
my mother, my brother, the baby came home
and I came down with the mumps.
This morning on my walk I called my brother
in his grown up motherless life
I wanted to be the first to wish him
his birthday he had not yet remembered.
All photos and text copyright Kelly DuMar 2017
