“A Time to Remember,” Jan. 24, 2022

(This column is from 2012.)

Out of the blue, the boy phoned to ask a question about a moment we shared years ago, a moment so momentous we would never be the same.

I remembered it well. How could I forget? He said it wasn’t important, he just wondered what time it took place. I smiled. He had no idea how important it was to me. Or how long it would keep me awake, flipping dusty, dog-eared pages of my mind, to find the answer.

What kind of mother forgets what time her child was born? It’s not like I wasn’t there. Yes, I had a few distractions. I didn’t check my watch. But still ….

Here’s what I clearly recall. I was 23 years old, married almost three years, living 3,000 miles from my family in a town so new and unfamiliar I’d get lost going to the grocery store.

My husband was teaching and coaching at a local high school. We had health insurance and a steady paycheck. We’d bought a house for about two years’ worth of his salary. It would shelter our family for nearly 50 years.

I was absolutely over the moon thrilled to be pregnant. All my life, I’d wanted to be a mother (and a grandmother, but first things first.) My experience with caring for children was limited to two younger brothers and a year as a substitute teacher.

But I’d done some reading about parenting and felt ready for whatever lay in store.

Basically, I had no clue. It didn’t matter. What I didn’t know, the boy would teach me.

On the day he was due to be born, his father had to coach a basketball game. At half-time, I was sitting in the bleachers, like a whale riding a see-saw, when I felt the first contraction.

I sent a note to the coach in the locker room: “In labor, might need to leave.’’

Minutes later it came back: “In foul trouble, game over soon.”

The game went into overtime. When his team finally lost, I bit my fist trying not to cheer. We rushed home to get a bag for me and a burrito for the coach, then drove to the hospital in the same car our soon-to-be-born baby would drive 16 years later to get his driver’s license.

By 2 a.m., I was in hard labor. Then it got harder. The nurse was a woman whose son had been my husband’s student.

“Don’t worry, child,” she told me, “I’m gonna take good care of you.” And she did, not only for my first baby, but for my second, three years later, and my third, three years after that.

On the second day, when I was still in “hard labor,” my husband made the mistake of asking if I could “hurry it up” because he had another game that night.

He claimed he was joking. I was not amused. Then I heard him on the phone telling one of his players he was “stuck” at the hospital and needed him to fill in that night as coach.

“I can hear you!” I said.

“Gotta go,” he whispered into the phone, “good luck!”

Things got a bit fuzzy after that. Somebody told me to push, so I did, for a really long time.

Next thing I knew, the coach was laughing and I was holding a little person who had hands that were tiny, but huge, like a King Kong action figure, and a lop-sided head like the rag doll that went through the wringer of my grandmother’s washer.

He was looking in my eyes as if he knew who I was, someone he had searched for and was so glad to find. And I found myself falling, falling, fast and hard, forever and always in love.

His life was just beginning. Mine would never be the same.

What time was it? I don’t know. All I know is this: It was the right time _ not a moment too late or too soon _ just when he was needed by the world, by his dad and, most of all, by me.

But according to his birth certificate (that I finally found in a box after searching half the night) it was 5:57 p.m.

Happy birthday, Josh. I am so glad you were born.

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