Lifelong Friendship

I remember quite clearly the stale smell, the plain white walls with silver railing, the brown doors with the room number next to it along with the patient’s name. In this case, the room number was 611 and the patient’s name was my mom’s. I was standing next to my dad glaring up at the big silver handle, wondering when I would get to go in.

I knew very well my life was about to change with a new baby brother. In some ways, for the better, and in some ways not so much. I knew that I was now going to have to share my mom with this new, cute, helpless creation known as baby boy. In fact, he was probably going to get most of the attention for a while. I was so used to it just being me that I honestly didn’t know what to expect. My mom warned me of this before the “big day”, and that she was really going to need my help and cooperation. After having that talk with my mom I knew that this “big day”, as she kept calling it, was going to be very special and important to not only her and my dad, but to me as well.

My dad finally opened the heavy brown door with a huge, obnoxious sign that had “it’s a boy!” written on it with big blue balloons being held by a teddy bear. The room was darker than the hallway had been. To the right was a couple of chairs and a small table with some homemade cookies on it, I assumed the oatmeal chocolate chip ones that my grandma makes for every occasion, and a lot of balloons tied to the chairs floating a few inches from the ceiling. There was this constant beeping noise coming from some kind of machine but it eventually faded into white noise. To the left was my extremely tired mom sitting up in bed. She looked very comfortable with all the pillows propping her up. In her arms, was my tiny, bald, and sleeping little brother? For being a 4 year old, this was the most important moment in my life so far. It was hard for me to process that I was once where he was, in my mother’s arms with her smiling down on me. I am 18 years old now and my brother and I are still really close. I tend to forget a lot of things, but I will always vividly remember the day he was born because it was the first day of a lifelong friendship.