She was due any minute, and she was cranky as hell.
We’d gone for dessert because she was craving chocolate cake, and we fought on the way back. She scratched my arm till it bled, and I regressed to being 12 and hating her and crying screaming vented to my other sister on the phone. Bitch.

She went into labor a day later, and I knew without anyone telling me because I woke up to sounds outside my door, and then later my mother running in and out of my room to get something from the bathroom.

I had a dream that it was a girl, not a boy as the ultrasounds had shown. I remember we were all in her inlaws type house somewhere, together, looking at the new baby, and I was asking her how it turned out to be a girl and not a boy. “IA’s stupid wussy gene’s you know. So typical” she said, as bitchy, irritable and derogatory as ever. The baby, it was a little cherub with wings and wise eyes a thousand years old. She looks at me, and I feel a spark of recognition. I remember hugging her, feeling her fat cheek on my own and closing my eyes because of the overwhelmed love. They tell me to take her for a walk outside. I’m barefoot, the driveway is drenched in sunlight, and its so bright I can’t see. Ama is there. I think, but she’s dead, and a small part of me realizes its all a dream. Ama – my daadi – is there to see the new born. I give the baby to her, and they walk into the light. They walk to the gate, and then Ama turns around, comes back, and gives her to me. I’m in the shadow of the porch, I don’t want to go barefoot into the sunbaked concrete. We stand there for a second, three generations, three snapshots in time. One unborn, one living, one dead. The light, its so bright when I close my eyes I can feel the baby breathe, I can see my grandmother’s sight from beyond the veil, can feel my heart churn out blood to my living arteries. I hear my mother calling for us, so I turn around and then go back to the dark and close the door behind me.

I wake up to the 5 a.m. phone call “it’s a boy!”. My father, I can’t recognize his voice because its got an alien ring of excitement, ecstacy, and total awed thrill of a first time grandparent.

I go to the hospital an hour later, and I fall in love. My very own brand new nephew, a miracle in the flesh. I look at his little furry head, and his adorable hands and feet, and I vow to fight dragons for this child, to slay playground bullies, to clean his poop and walk him at 2 a.m. Surrendering to total unconditional love, to light, to all that is good and beautiful in the world, I hold him for the first time, and press his swollen cheek to mine, and feel an echo of familiarity, of eternity.