April 1, 2010
Musketeers
Date: April 1, 2010
Location: Pompton Plains, NJ
Description: When I began this project, I figured I would start with the first picture ever taken of us. That was, I’m sorry to say, not entirely true. The first picture taken almost immediately after birth is the one posted above. For years, I kept hidden that Mitch and I had a sister, far left, who my mother had not yet named. I was told by my aunt that she would have named her Abbey. While I was never able to pry the entire story out of my mother, what I do know is that, shortly after delivery, a very frazzled woman in a nurse’s outfit came in and said there was some confusion and the girl wasn’t my mother’s. I do know my mother argued, having seen it come out of her herself, but the nurse was insistent that it was simply a clerical error. She took Abbey away. My mother, thoroughly exhausted from having gone through the delivery of triplets, didn’t argue, but planned to go to the nursery as soon as she was able to take it up with the hospital staff. Less than two hours later, she hobbled to the nursery, only to find there was no record of a girl delivered within the last two hours, and no nurse who matched the description my mother gave. I didn’t learn about this for years, until one day my sister finally broke down after a few wine coolers, claiming that she was robbed of finally having a sister. This is the only picture that remains of the three of us, though I secretly hope that, in posting this publicly, “Abbey” might stumble on it and contact us on Facebook.