38 Years Ago Today…

My mother woke me early that morning…like she always did…time to clean the house.  It was a Saturday morning ritual I dreaded but one I had grown accustomed to during my 18 years. Except this was a Friday…why today.  “Hurry up” was my answer.  I always moved rather slow when it came to doing household chores but on this particular morning she was really pushing…really rushing.  Finally the magic time came when we were finished…time to relax.  Except this day, there was no relaxing, no hanging with friends…it was time to go she said….to the hospital.

My mother was pregnant….my step father was in the Navy and had just left a couple of days earlier on a ship for a short hop cruise…it was up to me to get her from our house in Virginia Beach to Portsmouth Naval Hospital, about 20 miles of bumpy interstate highway between us.  I told her she might have clued me in to this possibility when she woke me up.  No time to complain…no time to argue…the house had to be clean before she could go…and now it was time to go. 

I was told “drive faster”…and accused of finding every single pothole in the road on the way there.  We arrived in time and she was taken away.  People didn’t fill the birthing rooms to witness a birth…I’m not even sure if it was allowed at the Naval hospital at that time.  So I waited…with nervous husbands and proud grandparents.  The clock ticked off the minutes…fathers-to-be paced and smoked….I paced some….read magazines…gazed out windows.  One elderly gentleman waiting…waiting to light a newly purchased cigar….waiting for the birth of his grandchild.  He asked me who I was there for…a sister, a girlfriend…I told him my mother.  I can still see him after all these years….he smiled, raised his fist, pumped it in the air and declared “right on old power” a little to loudly.  He made me laugh.  Suddenly I heard the sound of a screaming baby getting closer and closer….someone announced “Harris baby” over the wails outside in the hall.  I stepped out into the hall to see a nurse carrying a swaddled babe in her arms coming towards me…”that’s me” I said.

They presented the babe to me to see….all brand new…and I do mean brand new….she had not even been cleaned up yet.  She stopped crying and looked at me with newborn eyes….”what is it” I asked…a baby girl the nurse said.  The nurse hurried back down the hallway with the baby….I ran to the phone booth, my purse full of coins….family and friends were waiting for news…it’s a girl, we have a girl.  A sister….my baby sister.

Happy Birthday Melisa!  🙂