Labour

When I was fifteen I had a nightmare, a really bad one. It was two days before my birthday and as was my custom, I was telling my mom about it while she drove me here or there, as was her custom.

In my dream I had been busy cleaning up, I was preparing for a very important visitor. I described the apartment, the layout and the furnishings. I got drowsy in my dream, and laid down on the couch. As I was closing my eyes, I saw something like a bug run past my view. I was suddenly terrified. I got up with a vengeance and hunted it down. It ran behind the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. I opened the mirrored cupboard and came face to face with this thing that made me scream.

I noticed Mom's knuckles turn white as I described this horrible clicking mass of something living darting away from me.

What is it?
Mom grilled me for a few seconds. Have you ever seen a roach nest before? A what? Maybe she had told me this awful story already? No? Okay well here it goes...

And she told me about the day she went into labor with me. She had been cleaning up, was in an absolute deliriously happy state because I was about to be born. She got drowsy, and laid down on the couch. At one point she opened her eyes and saw a cockroach. Horrified she hunted it down, blah blah blah, bathroom cabinet voila! Cockroach nest.

The ensuing spraying, combined with her near delivery date, and the freak out session triggered her labor. She went to the hospital and two and a half days or as she delights in reminding me; 36 hours of labor later I arrived.

We never returned to that apartment, mom's horror had been so intense.

Yet, I had described it exactly.