Two Dads are Better than None

My mother loves telling this story and of course it always sounds funny to me, but the day I was born went something like this. August 1970 in Dallas was hot, my mother had planned ahead and put this very frilly night gown on layaway. Back in her day my aunt and mom were big into big hair. I mean huge hair with giant curlers in it. Fastened atop the mounds of hair was a wiglet, a little patch of fake flowing hair that only added to their demure as a woman in 70s. My mother had picked out a special wiglet and while she was talking to my Aunt on the phone trying to figure out if she was in labor or not, they decided she was. Off to the hospital she went with a suitcase in tow. Only my mother would have stopped by the beauty shop on the way to Baylor to pick up her prized wiglet.

In her 21 years of wisdom she had visions of herself as a glowing new mom dressed in a beautiful nighty with hair flowing down and holding her baby while receiving guests. The reality was quite different.

In my mind I can see her in labor in what I can only imagine as excrutiating pain. Probably about two hours into labor, she has had it. She was sweaty and no longer looked the demure 21 year old. The wiglet had fallen down and was a stringy mess. The way my mom tells the story, at some point she has just had it, so she pulls the blond wiglet off the top of her head, which looks more like a blond disco birds nest and hurls it across the delivery room muttering something like "Get this damn thing outta my hair!" I am sure. I am sure the doctors and nurses were taken aback.

A few hours later she awoke and asked the nurse what she had. She looked at my mom's bracelet and told her she had a boy. The nurse wheeled her down to the nursery and they held me up. I apparently had my entire fist in my mouth, and my mother thought, there he is, my son.

And that, my friends, is how I was brought into this world. At 38 I can say that it has been a wild ride filled with so many people I love and amazing experiences. So on this day I want to tell them all how much I love them and how much they mean to me!! And they know who they are, least of which the woman who hurled the wiglet across the delivery room at Baylor hospital :-)