A blue-eyed baby boy

There was a picture of a curly-haired, blue-eyed baby boy hanging in my parent’s bedroom. In the picture, he was sitting up and wore a blue baby suit and matching blue bootees. So many times over my childhood, my mother would look at it and tell me “That was the little boy I wished for. The little boy I believed I would have. And then you came along—a girl with long, straight hair!”

I didn’t think anything of it at the time and, like many things in my childhood that I now reflect on, just accepted it as part of the norm. Like many things since, I now realise it was odd and potentially damaging to my self esteem.

The picture was moved to the bathroom when I was 14. I said to Mum “It doesn’t suit the bathroom. It looks silly there.” With that, after so many years of seeing it, the picture was taken down.