Casolaro 4

Casolaro’s father was an obstetrician. Danny remembers him being visibly shaken sometimes coming home from work. He wouldn’t eat, would sit in a corner, a newspaper open before him but Danny could tell his eyes weren’t scanning the words. Birth defects, stillborn births, maternal deaths: the tragedies he faced. He didn’t talk about it. Sometimes, the child inside was almost like a monster, killing the mother trying to live, break free of the womb. Other times, it was the opposite: the mother was a monster, killing its child within. One or the other, intentional or not, rebelled from symbiosis. One of his own children, born after Danny, died from a heart defect just days after being born.