An Uncomplicated Life by Paul Daugherty

you’re sitting in traffic.
    And yet from the moment we left the hospital with Jillian for a second time, we knew nothing would be quite the same. We would not be so busy with each day that we would presume its best moments.
    Jillian wasn’t struck with our sober single-mindedness. She had no idea. When Kelly was making faces, all Jillian knew was that her brother was making her happy. So she laughed. This was the start of something big.
    Eventually, the village embracing and protecting Jillian would spread. As she ventured deeper into the world, her influence would spread, too. At this moment, the village was tight but no less important.
    There is no predicting how a kid will react to having a competitor in the house, especially when the new sister has a disability that requires extra attention. But Kelly’s eagerness tomake his sister laugh was a clear and pleasant beginning and a start toward good things.
    We enjoyed the moment. We allowed that. It was extraordinary.
    Meantime, Kerry and I worried about how all this attention paid to Jillian would affect Kelly.
    He was three years old then and was shy around strangers, but there was nothing strange about his house. He’d called dibs on that from the first. Now, a stranger had arrived and . . . stayed.
    Kelly celebrated Jillian’s original homecoming by hanging from the mantel in the family room. Jillian was two days old. Kelly had been around three years. He’d earned his spot in the family hierarchy. She was coming here? To my place? Well, okay. But she can’t do what I can do. She can’t hang from the mantel.
    His size-two feet dangled a foot above the floor. His fingers were bone-white from clutching the wood. He was incredibly proud of himself. “Look at me!” Kelly announced. “Look at what I’m doing! Jillian can’t do this!”
    Kelly also told us he had teeth. He did have a full set of gleaming baby teeth, all in a row. “Look at me eat these Oreos! Jillian can’t eat Oreos!” Kelly proudly jammed a few fingers into his sister’s mouth to advance his theory. “See? No teeth! Jillian can’t eat Oreos! Jillian doesn’t have teeth!”
    Kerry wanted Kelly to have Jillian. She wanted him to have the experience she had with her older sister. Kerry and Janis weren’t always best friends. But they were close even when they were apart, in a way only sisters can be. Soon after Jillian’sdiagnosis was made, nurses at the hospital asked Kerry her most immediate concern.
    “I’m worried about my son,” she said.
    We had named Jillian long before she was born so Kelly could know her before she arrived. We kept him informed of her progress. We didn’t want him to feel left out. Kelly felt Jillian kick in the womb. He heard the whoosh-whooshing her heart sounds made on the ultrasound. He watched the video from that procedure. We had a sno-globe that played the Tony Bennett standard “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.” Kelly liked to wind it up and put it on Kerry’s stomach.
    He was ready for a sibling, as much as any three-year-old could be. But maybe not for this sibling.
    “Look how much I grew!” Kelly said as he threatened to separate the mantel from the wall.
    “We saw you yesterday,” I reminded him.
    He insisted on tossing a ball in the house. It nearly went through a window. He whooshed like a big wind. “Look at me! I’m fast!” I’m thinking, So this is how it’s gonna be. One kid won’t do enough. The other will do too much.
    Their lives began entirely differently. Jillian entered center stage, shouting triumphantly, seeking applause in the footlights. Three years and a few months earlier, her brother had emerged in silence. He was awestruck and simply stared.
    Kerry’s legs were still airborne, in the stirrups. A doctor stood at the foot of the bed. Beneath his feet lay a wastebasket. I remember thinking, Is that in case Kelly slides out so quickly, the doctor doesn’t catch him? Headfirst, into a trash can. What a way to begin