I Am Going to Be a Great Mother.

I was approximately 10 years old. One night our family decided to lend a hand and babysit my cousin, Shalya, who was about 6 months old at the time. And to clarify, by “our family” offered to babysit, this meant that my 8 year old sister and I were left responsible for a small infant, because who knows where my parents were. This night went wonderfully. 

As an example, an empty bottle of wine was sitting out, and coming from the alcoholic family that we are, Shayla, of course, found the bottle. 

(Side-note: Shayla’s mother used to sneak beer into my apple juice to get me to stop crying when I was a baby. This is one of the many reasons why I may now be an alcoholic. In her defense, she just wanted me to fit in.)

Anywho, we couldn’t pry Shayla’s lips from the wine bottle for what I remember as hours. And my childhood memory is foolproof, besides the random clips from dreams, (both from sleeping and daydreaming), that have been inserted in throughout the years. I do remember finding Shayla's leech-like attachment to the wine bottle very amusing, so I let her continue to suck the bottle of any life it had left for most of the evening. 

Later that night I was holding Shayla, who was very bubbly and happy (probably from the droplets of wine that she had managed to slurp up), and wondered what would happen if I suddenly roared as loud as I could like a lion. I did this. She immediately started crying.

This is the exact image I had in mind during my roar.

I am pretty sure I scarred her for life and ruined her entire childhood. If I went back in time and changed this moment so that I thought better of my actions and did not turn my curiosity into reality, I do not think Shalya would be the Shayla I know today. She does seem to be a completely fine and normal 12 year old now, but I know I had to have messed something up. The look on her face was pure horror. I can only imagine the tricks that were played on her maturing baby brain.

Another time I was playing with Shayla at my grandmother’s house. Yet again, I was trusted to be alone with an infant. She was my doll as far as I was concerned, but she was way cooler because she was alive. Like Toy Story. Anyway, I was playing salon with her, so I set her on the bathroom counter, and began styling what little hair she had. I turned around to get a brush, turned back and whooooooop, Shayla is falling off the counter, head first. It was all in slow motion. I was just watching her fall, in full panic mode. 

But, by some miracle, I caught her before she hit the ground. This time, though, she didn’t seem phased at all by her near death experience. There was no lion roaring, so everything was fine. She just looked up at me, completely at ease. There may have even been a smile on her face.

I, however, was traumatized for life. I had almost killed a baby. It was at this point that it struck me that she was not a doll, but a real human being. Never again did I put her on any surface elevated from the ground. Nor did I tell any adult, or anyone for that matter, about how I almost dropped Shayla on the bathroom tile floor. 


(...I guess its out now.)