I don’t have a memory of being born, which is probably not surprising. What’s surprising is that I think I do remember it, even if I know that has to be wrong.

The memory is just this: The hospital was oddly beige and dimly lit with yellow incandescence. My mother sat in a very masculine, yellow leather chair, like a barber’s chair, built with comfort and function battling each other for supremacy. Through the window it was pitch black outside, and I think it was raining.

That’s it. That’s all I remember.

What I think I’m actually remembering here is the birth of my second cousin, Jordan, and if so the woman in the chair was probably his mom, my cousin Kim. I was very young when Jordan was born, and maybe at the time I did carry some fraction of a memory of my own first moments. Maybe I thought, this is what it was like when it happened to me, and my wires got crossed. Even that seems unlikely. But the feeling is strong.

What I can tell you with some certainty is I was born on Halloween in 1983, around 11:00pm. Since it was the 80s the hospital was probably pretty beige, and since I’m from Vancouver it was probably raining.

And that’s good enough for me.

_{Note: Whenever you see “Story” in the title of a post on this website, it’s something I wrote as an adult and then placed in my timeline where appropriate. This differs from “Journal” entries, which were actually written and posted at the time shown.}