15

I used to believe watermelon made you pregnant. I remember sitting at the kitchen table as my dad brought my mom a plate of cut-up watermelon, knowing that in her belly a sibling was growing. She blamed the constant craving for watermelon on her pregnancy and my four-year-old mind decided that what she really meant to say was that the watermelon itself made her pregnant.

Today, I tried to make sense of this memory in the context of watermelon being my favorite fruit as a kid. I decided that I must of created some criteria for watermelon's success in creating a baby, like eating it daily or reaching a certain age or even being married (though how watermelon could sense that someone is married is a different question all together). This reason came after my initial thought of, "Maybe, at first at least, I wanted a baby."

I'm sure, though at four my understanding of what a baby meant was extremely different from my understanding now.

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There is a video of my little brother laying on a baby quilt on the carpet of our living room. Every few minutes, I enter the frame and kiss my little brother on the cheek whispering, "I love you." After five or six kisses, my brother becomes irritated and starts whining and my mother can be heard telling me to stop. I continue.

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There is also a picture of me holding my baby brother, beaming with pride, now I jump just looking at the photograph. My little brother's head is sharply angled downward.