A Matriarchal Mystery
Okay, so I was sitting here thinking more about that whole “all the women in my family had their first babies at 19” thing...I realized something that gave me full-body chills. I was wrong. Kind of. See, at first, I thought the number 19 was tied to the firstborn child in every generation. But when I looked closer, it wasn’t about firstborns at all. It was about firstborn daughters. Let me explain. My grandmother had a baby before she had my mom. A boy. He died in infancy. I never met him, but I always knew about him. Her second child, my mama, was born when my grandma was 19. My mama? She gave birth to my brother just one month before her 19th birthday . So technically, she was 18. And I wasn’t the firstborn. I wasn’t the one who kept the pattern going. The 19 didn’t land on me. But here’s where it gets spooky. My sister had a baby girl at 19. That girl, my niece, had a baby girl at 19. And that girl had her baby girl…at 19. That’s three generations of wo...