The Night of the Blue Moon A Story by ruie

She was born on the night of the blue moon when shooting stars filled the skies; complete with ten fingers and ten toes a mop of black hair and eyes that stared right through you as if they knew a great secret. I was still half asleep from the long night of labor and birth when the nurse gently tapped my shoulder and placed her in my arms. As soon as the nurse left the room, I unwrapped her tightly wound blanket to check that she had all the essentials; yep they were there and I smiled to realize she was a real beauty. Amazed that such a beautiful creature could have come through me, I reminded myself what Kalil Gibran, the Prophet had written, “your children come through you, not from you”.

I wrapped the blanket tight again about her warm and sweet smelling little body and fed her the bottle the nurse had given me.

It was my plan to nurse her but as it turned out, my milk came in late
and so she became a bottle baby. I put her on my shoulder to burp her and as I laid her head down, she put her tiny hands against my shoulder and raised her head and pushed against me as if she was telling me, “hey, don’t get cocky, I am in control here!” I was taken back so startled was I at her move. And I know it was deliberate,
without a doubt, she clearly meant to tell me who she was and that she was the boss.

She was my first born and like me and my mother and her mother and grandmother and at least two or three great grandmothers twice removed before, she was the first born child and a female. We have counted at least seven generations of
women, all first born females. And, when she was born we were four generations of living females. And again, at the birth of her first born female, we were four generations of living females. My grandmother would tell me as I was busy
tending to my daughter’s needs, that we were blessed to be a first born and with it came great responsibilities and that it also meant we were chosen to be
survivors. And surviving is what we have had to do many times over from difficulties and traumas throughout all our lives.

It is something to be the seventh daughter of the seventh daughter but here the saga ended for when my granddaughter found she was with child, she was advised to end her pregnancy and we will never know if that child was a female cast away on a fateful night of the blue moon when shooting stars filled the skies.