Can you
remember details from 40 years ago? Of course not!
Then
again, if something very special happened, on some very special day, I’ll bet
you could.
I
know I can!
Barring
Alzheimer’s or some other mentally debilitating disease I shall never forget
what happened 40 years ago, yesterday, March 9th.
It was
a chilly Friday morning, and only five or six hours after I’d fallen into an
exhausted sleep from polishing door knobs, buffing escutcheons, or some similar
such drudgery the afternoon and evening of Thursday the 8th in the
finishing department of the Best Lock Corporation. My wife, Joy, was very
pregnant and expecting our first (and only) baby.
Two
weeks earlier we thought we were having a late February baby, but no, after a
few hours and the typical awkward inspections we were sent home. Even in my
foggy brained, sleep deprived condition, we were pretty sure; this time it was the real thing!
We
bundled up, and I helped Joy into our rusty old faded blue rattletrap of a 1966
Volkswagen Beetle, complete with one black 1968 front fender. (The memories of
that old car we owned for only a year are astonishingly myriad!) The heating
channels were rusted away, so it was a cold, cold ride from 168 S. 10th
Street in Noblesville to the St. Vincent Hospital on west 86th
Street in Indianapolis.
Well,
in spite of the fact it was definitely the real thing this time around, it was still
more than twelve agonizing (for Joy) and exhausting (for both of us) hours
later, filled with much weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth before the
doctor finally decided it really was “time” this time.
Back
in those days for Dads to be any part of the delivery process, the anxious
parents-to-be had to go through weeks of Delivery Training, or whatever they
called it. I was a full time pastoral ministries student with classes every day
. . . every day . . . from 8:00 or so until noonish, and I was working the second shift
eight hours every night. Needless to say, there weren’t any time slots in my
schedule available for Delivery Training.
I don’t
know why, but when the doctor determined it was “time”, Mary the nurse, knowing
full well I hadn’t had any Delivery
Training, with a sparkle in her eye looked at me and told me to don the green
garments and join the party, or at least something enough like that I got the
message.
From
the moment Joy started “showing”, to the final trimester, all the prophets and experienced
mothers determined our baby was going to be a boy. Evidence of such claims
ranged everywhere from the size of the baby to the way she carried the baby.
There was no doubt it, deemed the prognosticators, this was a boy! Neither of
us said anything. We just smiled and prayed the baby would be strong and
healthy . . . and she was!
When
the doctor announced, “It’s a girl”, Joy literally squealed with delight, “Really!?!?”
We both wanted that girl, and thanked God the prophets were false prophets.
So,
happy day after, Marian Heather Hartman Willeke, and thank you for one of the
most wonderful days of our lives, plus 14,610 since.
