“A Time to Remember,” May 30, 2023

This column is from 2012.

Out of the blue, the boy asked me a question about a moment we shared years ago, he and I, a moment so momentous we would never be the same.

I remembered it, of course. How could I forget? I’d sooner forget my name. But that’s not what he was asking. He knew I hadn’t forgotten it. He just wondered what time it took place?

What time? As in hours and minutes?

Never mind, he said, It was just question, nothing important.

I smiled. He had no idea how important it was to me. Or how much it would haunt me, keep me awake, flipping dusty, dog-eared pages of my mind, trying to find the answer.

What kind of mother forgets the exact 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 do recall. I was 23 years old, married for nearly three years, living 3,000 miles from my family in a town so new and unfamiliar I could get lost going to the grocery store.

My husband had recently started teaching and coaching at a local high school. We had health insurance and a steady paycheck. We had been fortunate to buy a house for about two years’ worth of his salary. It would be our home for almost 50 years.

I was absolutely over the moon to be pregnant. All my life I had wanted to be a mother (a grandmother, too, but first things first.) I had limited hands-on experience with children, but had done a lot of reading and had no doubt I was 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 side-saddle on a see-saw, when I felt the first contraction. At half time, 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 had to bite my fist not to cheer. We went home to get my bag and a burrito for the Coach, then drove to the hospital in the same car the boy would drive 16 years later to get his driver’s license.

By 2 a.m., I was in hard labor. Or so I thought. Then it got harder. The nursing assistant was a woman whose son had been one of my husband’s students. 

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

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

Later he would say he was joking. I was not amused. At one point, I heard him on the phone telling one of his players that he was sorry, but he needed him to fill in as coach at the game.

“I can hear you!” I said.

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

Things got a little fuzzy after that. Somebody told me to push, so I did, for a really long time, hours or days or years, I couldn’t say.

Next thing I knew, the Coach was laughing and I was holding a little person that had big hands like a King Kong action figure, tiny but huge, and a lop-sided head like the rag doll that accidentally went through the wringer of my grandmother’s washer. And he was looking up at me as if somehow he knew exactly who I was, someone that he was really glad to finally meet face to face. And I was falling, falling, fast and hard, forever and always in love.

What time was it? I can’t believe I forgot. What I clearly recall is this: It was the right time, not a moment too late or too soon, just when he was needed by the world, 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.

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