Ficlets

“I said, ‘I’m pregnant’- and close your mouth before something flies into it”.

I was speechless. Pregnant? I could not have been more surprised if they had told me they were aliens from outer space.
My mother was 40 years old, for one. Who has a baby when they’re forty? She had a career, too. And neither of them ever talked about having another kid. How could this be?
All sorts of images flew to mind: The house, full of baby furniture and smelling of poopy diapers; Mom waddling around with her belly out to here, one hand rubbing her sore back, the other stuffing her face with all sorts of weird preggo food, supervising Dad as he puts up the new wall paper in the guest room; Dad handing out cigars at the office, accepting congratulations for a job well done, telling me how Mom would need my help more than ever from now on. And me..well, what about me ?
After all, for 16 years it had been only me. I had been the baby.