Forgotten: The Story of a Story

I was born of passion. Yearning, burning thirst, in the greening flush of a deluge after the parched silence of drought. So many moments aligned to enable my conception, moments of pain, moments of intimacy, a moment of unworded joy. But perhaps, after all the drama, the moment of my conception was one of quiet happenstance, the dervish whirling well beneath the surface for a change. Probably, my mother didn’t even know, in that moment, as her head lay warm on her lover’s chest in the amber light of a waning afternoon, or as she sat behind the wheel of her car, eyes anchoring her wandering mind to the glazed glow of tail lights in the quickening dusk, that the zygote had formed within her. I don’t know when that dawning realisation came for her, I suppose it is different every time, but I do know, I know with certainty, that I was met with tenderness. With love.

Birth was thirsty work. I was past due, and my mother always blamed my sisters for that, like their needing her attention was enough to stall the process. Perhaps so. I am certain death waits on circumstance regularly, why not birth too? After all, so many other bodily needs get put aside, enflamed, distorted, by birth. There is a despotic bent to it. Hunger is ignored, or else it’s every whimsy humoured. Bladders are sealed, or demand perpetual emptying. And thirst? Thirst is placated, like the crowning depends on it, until it is flung aside with the rest at the denouement. Domineering at the least, wouldn’t you say? Or perhaps that’s me. I demanded a lot, but life flourished from every moist, gleaming drop of moisture she squeezed from herself. I basked in the attention, bloomed under her gaze.

To see me laying in my mother’s lap, it would be easy to say we all look pretty similar. Yes, of course, there are some obvious differences, and here and there something that really stands out as unusual, but to those who are not really interested there’s not much to immediately tell us apart. Some darker, some lighter, all tones in between. Some longer, some shorter, quieter, louder. Some full and round in the body, others with all the meat at the extremities. Some that don’t engage, and some that stare back at you, like they see into your heart. But to those who care to look, we are each unique. Whatever, there is a script to follow when we are presented by our exhausted parents. “Oh, isn’t it LOVELY, didn’t you do well?” “Gorgeous, you must be so proud.” And they lap it up, the mothers and fathers holding us up so tenderly, searching for vindication, hyper vigilant to any sign of disapproval. So vulnerable after all that bleeding, so desperate for us to survive. So hopeful that we might just thrive.

Thriving, though, that’s a privilege in the world I was born into. Of course, millions survive. Where would the human race be if not? But the thrivers? Those that wander the irrigation painted pleasure grounds, bright amidst the sparsely flowered gullies and yellowed plateaux? You would think it would be the fittest, like Darwin theorised. But evolution is a funny thing, in this age of technology. I suppose more do thrive than ever before, in a way, but life at the top is brief and brutal. Attention spans are short and legacy as rare as it ever was. Certainly survival is easier than ever though. And I will survive. My mother made me that way.

She succoured me, sculpted me, and I grew whole. The unabashed exuberance of infancy gave way to angst and self-awareness as my debutante moment approached. My coming out. That infancy was nearly lost to me already, that time wallowing in the lush garden, soil between my toes, waiting to see what grows, what germinates, what blooms and what withers under the nurturing hand of my mother. Or else curled in the glow of the transforming fire, watching light and shadow play tricks with the truth. Adolescence is harder, my mother’s acceptance gave way to criticism and an incessant picking over. I knew, still, she wanted me to do well, but knowing she doubted me left me frayed and uncertain as she shepherded me ever onwards towards the gateway.

We arrived, before I was ready. “Your brothers and sisters,” she told me “they are waiting for you, you will not be alone.” It was a comfort, even as I wanted to be alone, to stand above the rest of them. Perhaps a little longer? We should weave my clothes more closely? We could polish my teeth? But she was done with me. She had desiccated herself, wrung herself into me, and besides, she already held a seed in her womb, delaying implantation like a bear, readying herself even then to hunker down in her den, just as soon as the rains came. I knew that she would think of me for a time, but she had done for me all that she could.

The gateway sat on the edge of unknown. Sheer and abrupt, it was impossible to know what was on the other side for me. I am one in a hundred, a hundred in a billion, a billion billion, whisperers, screamers, seekers all, and there is only so much water to go round. And yet, I knew I would survive. She checked me over one last time, fussed and clucked, tweaked at my ruffles, pulled at my petticoats, and then it was time. Her final gift, like a kiss I carry always, is my name. “Forgotten”.

Her eyes closed as she pushed me through the gate. I knew that she would linger for a day or two, pressing herself to that wall, trying to divine how I was doing, clasping at any news the birds brought back, wondering always if she could have done better. For a week or two she would think of me, but in months it would be as if we were strangers. I was cut lose. I stood alone amidst the dunes in all my finery, waiting. Waiting while my glittering garb turned funereal in the stark desert light. Waiting while my throat grew dry and my voice became weak. Waiting while my knees buckled, and my backbone bowed. Waiting while my beauty went unnoticed under the disinterested glare of the sun. Unnoticed, unseen, unread. A glint in a glittering sea. Engulfed in the desert's parched silence, I was nothing but another grain of sand in the wind.