Birthdays
Thirty nine years ago, at this very moment, I am not quite born yet. My mother is still in very hard labor, my father is pacing and nervous.
I am born at 7:18 in the morning, on August 15th, 1970. My mother is 19 and my father is 20. My mother will remember it as one of the most traumatic experiences in her life, and she will complain about it occasionally for many years.
Though my grandmother swears that nothing happened, both my parents told me at different times that I nearly died when I was born.
My mom said that I was born blue and they had trouble getting me to breathe. My dad told me years later that when they sent me home from the hospital, they thought I'd be dead in a few days. Neither one of them ever elaborated on this story, and the rest of my family says they don't remember that it happened at all.
A birthday mystery I guess.
I have a scrap of paper in my grandmother's handwriting. It has all the details of my birth, written on a deposit slip from her checking account. She jotted down all the pertinent details to tell my grandfather when she called him. The amazing this is that it was kept in the family bible for all these years.
My other grandmother, my father's mother, found him with his face pressed against the glass window of the nursery. He said " Oh Momma, isn't she the most beautiful thing you've ever laid eyes on? I wish I had a dozen more just like her" Of course,that came back to haunt him over the years. Anytime I was being particularly difficult, my grandmother would ask him if he really wanted twelve more of me. She said she had never seen anyone more in love than he was on the first day he saw me.
This is the first birthday in my life that I'll neither speak to my mother , nor my father.
So, it's 3:15 in the morning and I'm eating reeeeaaaaly amazing cake and contemplating the mysteries of birth and death.
I am both happy and sad, excited and afraid. I want to move forward and embrace the future, while still remembering where I come from, who I am ,and how I turned out to be that way.
I am born at 7:18 in the morning, on August 15th, 1970. My mother is 19 and my father is 20. My mother will remember it as one of the most traumatic experiences in her life, and she will complain about it occasionally for many years.
Though my grandmother swears that nothing happened, both my parents told me at different times that I nearly died when I was born.
My mom said that I was born blue and they had trouble getting me to breathe. My dad told me years later that when they sent me home from the hospital, they thought I'd be dead in a few days. Neither one of them ever elaborated on this story, and the rest of my family says they don't remember that it happened at all.
A birthday mystery I guess.
I have a scrap of paper in my grandmother's handwriting. It has all the details of my birth, written on a deposit slip from her checking account. She jotted down all the pertinent details to tell my grandfather when she called him. The amazing this is that it was kept in the family bible for all these years.
My other grandmother, my father's mother, found him with his face pressed against the glass window of the nursery. He said " Oh Momma, isn't she the most beautiful thing you've ever laid eyes on? I wish I had a dozen more just like her" Of course,that came back to haunt him over the years. Anytime I was being particularly difficult, my grandmother would ask him if he really wanted twelve more of me. She said she had never seen anyone more in love than he was on the first day he saw me.
This is the first birthday in my life that I'll neither speak to my mother , nor my father.
So, it's 3:15 in the morning and I'm eating reeeeaaaaly amazing cake and contemplating the mysteries of birth and death.
I am both happy and sad, excited and afraid. I want to move forward and embrace the future, while still remembering where I come from, who I am ,and how I turned out to be that way.