They always said I was a happy baby, once things settled down. I’ve heard the story many times. The very beginning was rough. I tried to enter the world shoulder-first and barely came through the struggle of being born. My mother labored, hour after hour, until the doctor finally got me turned around. “By then,” Dad always says, “I was scared to death that I’d lost them both.” I came out blue. The doctor massaged me, slapped me, blew air into me. The standard routines to stimulate breathing. At first nothing. But then I responded. With a desperate gasp, I swallowed my first gulp of air. I was alive. “That doctor nearly keeled over,” Dad says. “See, he wasn’t expecting Little Miss Jean to make it. She surprised him, and good.”

Was the surprised doctor glad or sorry? I was without oxygen for a long time. Surely the doctor knew I was brain damaged.

For weeks, my little body trembled and twitched in an Isolette. Sucking didn’t come naturally, but they fed me from a syringe and I choked down enough to live. And then, at three months, I discovered how to swallow. “Once she got the hang of it,” Dad jokes, “there was no stopping her. She eats us out of house and home!”

“Now, Billy, cut that out,” my mom always says. I always laugh.

By the time I started swallowing, I was nice and pink. Soon I got plump, just like a normal baby. My mother and father had come to love me.

“Baby Jean was so special,” my parents say. I was immersed in their love; they treasured me all the more because my life had come so dear. Freely they gave me all I needed. And seventeen years later, they still feed me, bathe me, and dress me with the same care they gave me when I was an infant. In return, all they ask is that I be happy. It’s a good bargain. I’ve kept my side of the deal. I float, placid, calm, absolutely content in the water’s embrace. Just as I am meant to be.

Reality intrudes with the sound of Sara’s voice. “Hey, Jean.” The sound is close, but I can’t find Sara in the water. I look up. The sun overhead almost blinds me, but I finally make her out. Up on the dock, alone, still in her dress, still in her wheelchair, drawing a picture.

“Never in my life have I seen a spazzo look so relaxed! Who’d’a thunk it? A spazzo! As relaxed as a fat, lazy, happy walrus on Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom.”

I don’t try to speak. A fat, lazy, happy walrus would not make the effort. I just float.

*   *   *

Within seconds after I’ve come out of the lake, a coating of algae has dried tight and grainy on my skin. When they ask if I want to be in the first shift in the girls’ showers, I squeal enthusiasm. Now clean, still cool, I’m content to sit in the cabin and wait for the others.