Day 2 Prompt: Describe the circumstances of your birth... Write your epitaph after a lifetime spent as a writer. What would it say specifically in terms of your writing life, about your work as a writer? What do you want it to say? Write it now.

I’m the smallest baby my mom ever had. Impressive, not really. But she did have six of us, which is an above average sample size. Size, I must also admit, is relative, as eight pounds is actually quite commonplace. But here’s where I’d like to think I’m special. Here’s where I claim that my eight pounds were of the extra ornery variety. Yes, my Irish-tempered, middle-child-syndromed eight pounds sufficiently made their presence known in this world.

Or at least in my mother’s world.

Just after my birth she caught pneumonia. (In hindsight, I feel terrible). This meant extra days in a hospital bed. It meant Lauren’s first day of Kindergarten would be greeted with wild, untamed hair. It meant Andy and Kate at four and two would wrinkle my grandmother’s skin and recede my father’s hair.

A juggling act of juice and crayons and crying. Stir until stirred crazy. Then add eight pounds of me. I am the crescendo.

So perhaps my epitaph is this: I am the smallest crescendo. For size, as we’ve established, is relative--Quite a lot can be done with very little. I am eight pounds that packed a punch.