Going by the book’s recommendations, if one were to rate Mila’s readiness for changes in life on a scale of one to five, she wouldn’t get any higher than a two. I don’t mean to complain about the food, although I’ll admit I’m already sick of French fries. Of course it wouldn’t hurt if my Mama varied the menu, but I won’t get hung up on food. There are more substantial problems. Besides Mila’s harmful predilections for alcohol and smoking that have haunted me from the moment of conception, there is now a third enemy: nervous breakdowns.
There’s nothing I can do for her; she’s in no condition to control her feelings. Her stresses are my headaches. If she’s not able to build a soundproof wall around her heart and protect herself from unnecessary suffering, I’ll have to take care of myself. So far, this is just a declaratory statement. We are joined by a single thread, and I am powerless to change anything. If she sneezes, I tremble as if there were an earthquake. If she becomes nervous, I grow faint from the stuffiness.
How can one find psychological independence while in the womb?! The nine-month incarceration is the best time of life, but for me it’s a test of endurance! Instead of a contented and carefree life, I have to be alert, listening to conversations and thinking about my own protection. Maybe these experiences will be useful to me in the future. Who knows, perhaps many great leaders, before they became great, were forging their characters and achieving the elements of survival inside their mothers’ wombs, just as I am doing. They may have also been threatened by the surgeon’s scalpel, but they maintained their self-control, confidence and faith victoriously. Am I a future Emperor Bonaparte? Russian Generalissimo Suvorov? Admiral Nelson? We’ll see, we’ll see… We can talk about my career later. First I have to win my freedom.
The book my Mama was reading contains several stupid mistakes, which may cause Homeric laughter. It says that a child begins to see and hear consciously at the end of the first month after birth or at the beginning of the second. At the same time, the first cognitive reflexes appear.
This is complete nonsense! But the things that are described in the book are only the tip of the iceberg. Perhaps when they cut the umbilical cord that connects me to Mama, I will actually begin to perceive the world again. After being blinded by the bright light and losing my ability to think logically during the first minutes of life outside the uterus, I will learn to see again during the second or third week. By the age of four months, I will be able to distinguish colors, and towards the end of my first year of life, I will pronounce my first distinct word. I will also learn to walk. In any case, these are the stages of life ascribed to the Embryo in