Embroidering in the Well

Daily writing prompt

Share what you know about the year you were born.

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I don’t know much about the year I was born but I know that it didn’t go well.

My mother stayed in the hospital for six weeks after I was born. I was sent home to be cared for by my grandmother. There was no physical reason for my mother to be in the hospital. She was there for other reasons. She wasn’t well, my father would say later, much later, decades. He shook his head when he said this and then told me that their plan was to have another baby after me, but that plan was canceled.

That she wasn’t well wasn’t new, but having a baby apparently exacerbated her basic unwellness. This had happened before with my older brother and sister. Now, we would call this postpartum depression. Who knows what they called it then? She wasn’t well, my father said. No elaboration.

I was born in April, so it was probably mid-summer before my mother was well enough to take the reins. Probably then, my grandmother packed her bags and traveled the couple of hours back to her home. She likely sat by the phone every day, wrote a letter each week, worried around the clock. Embroidered.

It had to have been a heavy, worrisome time.

That’s what I know about the year I was born. It was difficult.

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