the birthday story - untold
every year on my birthday my Mom would call me and tell me the story of the day i was born….i miss it terribly.
she would tell me that on the evening of june 3 she made tuna salad for dinner. she and my dad had a evening at home and around nine o’clock she thought that they baby was coming. my dad remembers her in the kitchen doing dishes or something and then she said, “I think I need to go to the hospital.” so around ten o’clock, with her bags packed, my Mom drove herself to the hospital and i was born at ten to one in the morning.
later on the 4th, she said there were terrible storms and even a tornado. the hospital staff moved all the new mommy’s and babies down into the basement until the weather cleared. then she stayed in the hospital for a week until she brought me home.
in the last year of her life, my mother’s speech became very impaired. the disease she had, MSA, atrophied her vocal cords, so she was very difficult to understand. her lips would move, but sometimes no sound would come out. it was heartbreaking. still, she called me to tell me the story of my birth and i knew it so well, she didn’t need the words.
and even though her speech was distorted and her voice was not her own, i long to hear it again.
in a sweet gesture, but a failed attempt, my dad called me this year, and told me….it was on this day that your mother….i stopped him. no dad, it was yesterday. you went in late on the evening of the 3rd. you had tuna salad for dinner and then went in around ten. oh yes, that’s right. and i called your grandparents around two in the morning and told them, “their daughter was fine, and my daughter was fine too.”
that one i hadn’t heard before.