My Brother's Birthday is January Blue

Each passing year, on the day of our birth

my mother would call, we counted on this

she would always be the first to wish us 

Her fifth, our youngest, a brother, was born

January 11, it was Mumps season in our house

her OB insisted she be kept away 

for seven days in the hospital she stayed

away protecting him from us

Every day she was absent I skipped

first grade, unwilling to be left out

of our gang - I didn't feel well at all - so when 

our family doctor Gagliarty came to call

placed his cold clean palms against my glands

asked if I hurt I said yes in a softest voice

Mumps! he declared, the whole lot of them!

 to our frazzled cousin who was filling in. 

From my lie, I suffered days, days until

my mother, my brother, the baby came home

and I came down with the mumps.

This morning on my walk I called my brother

in his grown up motherless life

I wanted to be the first to wish him

his birthday he had not yet remembered.

All photos and text copyright Kelly DuMar 2017