What My Parents Wanted

What My Parents Wanted
Christopher Bogart

On January seventh, nineteen forty-six, I was not really aware of my mother’s expectations
of who I would be. The Gerber Baby, I suppose. That was the image of infancy,

in those days when depression and war had finally abated, and overseas fathers were
anxious to get home. New mothers were so very dependent on their elderly neighbors,

those wise women in small floral print cotton dresses from whom much was expected.
I am sure she didn’t expect eighteen hours of labor and the inevitable Cesarean

before she could see for herself what she and my father had wrought:
a tiny round head, perhaps, with wispy red hair, teacup ears, china blue eyes,

a pink bow mouth, in a little powder blue gown to remind them of the security of
their legacy, of the bearer of their last name, their “sweetest little fella that everybody

would know was mighty lak’ a rose.” I can picture my father, in his bright navy whites, holding
his sailor cap in one hand, and a baseball glove in the other. As he stared through the

nursery window and the nurse held me up, I’ll bet he expected to see me one day as his
personal champion on a Little League team, the shortstop, I’d wager. I’ll bet, as my mother

lie in her hospital bed, she had visions of me as a lawyer, the post-war Perry Mason,
deciding the fate of the innocent in moving summation, spun to the jury’s rapt attention.

Was that what my mother expected? Were those my father’s dreams? What were they thinking,
hoping, dreaming as they wrapped me in their world of whitest white and held me so very tight?

They never said. For, in a life in real time, I became a teacher of tall tales, a listener of sad
stories, a volunteer in the commonweal of black and brown, of yellow and red, as well as white.

And, let’s not forget, a worker of words. Is that what they wanted? They never said.
In the end, I guess, it just didn’t matter. Like it or not, I’m what they got.