Earliest Memory

I remember a pale room, it smelled primal, sweet, and medical. The light shining through the blinds passes through me now like I’m in a train, looking out at the flickering world. My nimble hands, holding onto the thumb of my father as I walked up to the glass box. He was in the glass box, wrapped in white and blue wool. He had a little hat with a baby duck, his cheeks red and purple. As he lay asleep, I peered closer into the glass. Tiny mittens, tiny nose – freckles. Little movements as conversations grew louder. The metallic beeps from nearby rooms became annoyingly irregular. I preferred him then. When he was smaller than me. Before he shot to six foot eight, stumbling in drunk on a Saturday, replacing the empty semi-skimmed carton for a tin of condensed milk in late night brews - trashing the kitchen. But I’m still reminded of the gurgles in the ward. I can feel my grinning face over him as though I was kneeling to stroke a cat. 

It reminds me of the chicks we raised a short while after. Starting from little brown and pale green eggs in their incubator. Incubators are like tiny worlds, like a living room that isn’t yours. Past the cage of polystyrene, the chicks incubator had a window and a thermometer. It regulated the temperature from the heat lamp – the yellow buzzing glow shone on the egg tops. They sat on bundles of cotton wool like little beds. I would watch them for hours; I’d anticipate any slight movements or wobbling in their neat little rows. It seems I was always looking through windows, I still am now. But its blurry this time. It comes in fragments and the brightness is often overwhelming.