You know how parents always say they don’t have a favorite. I find this to be completely untrue. Of course, they may not be able to say they love one child more than another. But there is always a favorite. Youngest brother was Norma’s favorite. She had gone through parenting stuff with us first three. By the fourth, she could just love. And he in turn, adored her back.
My sister and I found a newspaper clipping from our local paper that had a picture of our family when he was born. His birthday was yesterday. It was a “home birth”, although it wasn’t truly at home, but at St. Mary’s convent. I can’t find it at the moment, so not posting it, but did find a collection of polaroids from the birth and soon after. My parents were truly hippies and so I had to leave some of these out!
I went through and pulled out all photos that had both youngest brother and mom. They are pretty much all from the first couple years of his life, before she got sick. Here’s the collection. There is a breastfeeding one, that doesn’t show anything, but I’m including it because my mother had absolutely no qualms about breastfeeding in public.
In the last photo, I don’t see any other people from our family. This must have been a church trip.
Since there is not many of youngest brother and Norma, I thought I’d add a few in from us siblings. Youngest brother was known for a few things. The first photo begins an obsession with suits. He loved to dress up for church. He also would “give mass”. Probably completely sacrilegious, but we would all attend. The love for the youngest was the most visible coming from my mother, but I would say we all practiced this affection, as seen in “Terrific Kid”. I could hardly leave out the leotard photo. The others are just moments of care that are a nice respite from the complexity of adult life.
I’ll end with a lovely photo of grandma and young brother. They are both Tauruses. Happy birthday to you both!
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