The Last, First. The First, Last.
I made her laugh the last day she lived. The nurse asked her, “Who’s that? Sitting over there?” Mom said, “He’s my son.”
“Your first born,” I said. She laughed and repeated, “My first born.” Then, a little later, she closed her eyes and didn’t open them again.
On my first birthday. I stood on the stoop of the small trailer we first called home. Below me, on a little table-stand, a cake with one lit candle. Beyond the candle stood Mom, pregnant with my brother, looking down into the view-finder of a top-view Kodak box camera. “Smile,” she told me.
I remember Daddy squatting beside me, his hand on my back, steadying me. I vaguely remember him saying, “Blow.”
Somewhere in the world, there is a snapshot of this moment. If I now remember all the salient details correctly, Mom told me it was the first roll of color film they’d ever bought for the camera.