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Times have changed
Mar. 26th, 2007 10:52 amMany years ago, sometime between the time when dinosaurs roamed the earth and the invention of the internet, my mother woke up on a Sunday morning experiencing labor pains.
Since this was the 60s, her first act was to get dressed and iron the previous day's laundry so my father would have a week's worth of shirts to wear to the office. Only then did she inform my father, who drove her to the hospital after dropping my brother off with family. The hospital told him to go home--this was going to take a while, and there was no point in a mere father staying at the hospital. So he went to his mother-in-law's house for Sunday dinner, which was traditionally served in the early afternoon.
During dinner the hospital called--I'd arrived much faster than expected. I was also a girl, to everyone's surprise. There hadn't been a female Bray born in the last hundred years. As for my mother's family, she and her sisters had already produced five male grandchildren, so there was much general rejoicing. (And a mad dash to the stores on Monday so my aunts could finally buy girly baby things, after years of unrelenting blue.)
My father was so shocked by the news of my arrival that his brother-in-law (the state trooper) drove him back to the hospital, not trusting my dad behind the wheel.
Every time my birthday rolls around, I think of how much times have changed. Of my mother, giving birth alone, because this was how things were done, while her husband, mother, sisters and their husbands sat down to a Sunday dinner. Over the years as my mother recounted the story, her one quarrel with my father was not that he had left her alone, but rather that he'd enjoyed one of her mother's roast beef dinners, while she was stuck in the hospital.
Anyway, that's how I came to be here. I'm not much for celebrating birthdays, particularly not my own. But it is a good day to remember where I came from.
Since this was the 60s, her first act was to get dressed and iron the previous day's laundry so my father would have a week's worth of shirts to wear to the office. Only then did she inform my father, who drove her to the hospital after dropping my brother off with family. The hospital told him to go home--this was going to take a while, and there was no point in a mere father staying at the hospital. So he went to his mother-in-law's house for Sunday dinner, which was traditionally served in the early afternoon.
During dinner the hospital called--I'd arrived much faster than expected. I was also a girl, to everyone's surprise. There hadn't been a female Bray born in the last hundred years. As for my mother's family, she and her sisters had already produced five male grandchildren, so there was much general rejoicing. (And a mad dash to the stores on Monday so my aunts could finally buy girly baby things, after years of unrelenting blue.)
My father was so shocked by the news of my arrival that his brother-in-law (the state trooper) drove him back to the hospital, not trusting my dad behind the wheel.
Every time my birthday rolls around, I think of how much times have changed. Of my mother, giving birth alone, because this was how things were done, while her husband, mother, sisters and their husbands sat down to a Sunday dinner. Over the years as my mother recounted the story, her one quarrel with my father was not that he had left her alone, but rather that he'd enjoyed one of her mother's roast beef dinners, while she was stuck in the hospital.
Anyway, that's how I came to be here. I'm not much for celebrating birthdays, particularly not my own. But it is a good day to remember where I came from.