Today’s my day, 1970: born across the street from the Allentown Fair while my dad was having a hamburger and my mom labored. They were 21, met in the laundromat, my mom folding my dad’s laundry. Married two months later, then a life of me to follow, in the late fall.
Lily was born 35 years later in the spring, a natural birth, but had trouble breathing and Dawn hemorrhaged, leaving me split between status on the two.
Some fuck broke into our car at the hospital and we had to clean the glass out of the car seat, then drive home with a cardboard window. Changed the lock on the doors, called all the credit card companies…but it got better from there.
Charlotte was born in the fall, emergency-C. Between the two kids, Lily has all the optimism of spring while Charlotte has the surprise-factor of fall.
Tonight, I’ll wear a coat I bought in 1986 around my birthday, when I was down on being dumped by my first girlfriend. It’s black Kashmir, falling apart on the insides, but fits perfectly. It was $20 at a second-hand store in Allentown, and may be on its last leg.
Bill Pearse 
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