It was warm and dark, with red and gold patterns of light swirling around me like flames as I drifted aimlessly, turning and swirling in an ethereal spa.  Sounds, muffled and distant, swam before my bleary eyes as well, in waves of purples and greens. There was nothing to contemplate, nothing to do except open my eyes and close them again, breathe in the warmth around me, and drift.  

I think being born must have felt like drowning.  Being sucked down deeper and deeper, farther away from every place I’d known, away from the safety and serenity of that peaceful place.  No way to run, no way to fight, only to struggle haplessly until I was out in the cold, cut loose – all that air threatening to smother me.

            You’d have to grab onto something pretty fast to survive such a thing, probably the first thing you could get – a piece of cloth, a gloved finger, a warm breast.  Anything to endure the relentless pull of all that space threatening to suck you deeper still.  I don’t know what I grabbed onto during my first days of life.  Whatever it was, it must have turned to vapor in my small, wrinkly hand, because the next time I opened my eyes I was lying in my brothers quivering arms, hanging on for dear life.