WTH, I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna gurgle a memoir even though I’m only six months old.  My life is great, though filled with struggle. People will want to know joys and sorrows–and hear everything I’ve done for 184 days! Like yesterday I ate my first solid food! Baby carrots, baby meatloaf, oysters. (JK, my mom Amberbaby ate that.) But anyway, after my first important meal, I wondered something. I wondered what being fed by Mom meant–was she denying my independence? Being over protective, and I’d grow up weak and angry? But I also didn’t want to be deprived and grow up weak and angry, so feeding me was okay. After dinner I went to sleep, an event that’s big in self-care. It was really interesting and I babbled about it. How sleeping like a baby will help me get over problems I’ll work out to become whole, and be a better person and, BTW–make a difference.

But I can’t wait till I can write, like all the others telling about their life. All their days and nights, the colic and other bad stuff…toxic people they had to get over and how they stopped doing something wrong and now they can feel good about themselves. I’m going to know about all this and find out too how to get love back when I lose it! But first I’m going to burble my “whip-smart” bubbles fans admire! When Mom collects them no one will ever forget what I think and say. People will run to my stroller and Mom will press these adorable fingers to give autographs! With my memoir no one will go through their troubles alone. They’ll relate to another’s pain: mine, me sharing everything I know, giving back to the world what it’s given to my 184 gut-wrenching amazing days.

Terese Robison has lived, in almost equal thirds of her life, in Mexico, California, and New York. She’s been an editor, interpreter, and tutor/mentor for youth on probation and now teaches writing at community colleges. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in Hiram Poetry Review, West Texas Literary Review, Tahoma Literary Review, *82 Review, Monkeybicycle, and several anthologies. A collection of her stories was developed in postgraduate study with Janet Burroway and Marisa Silver.