jimsjournal

Happy Birthday, Adam -- 09/30/02

Today is Adam's birthday -- my first born -- and it seems impossible for so many years to have passed since 1968.

Wow.

Thirty-four years.

I remembered that I had written about Adam's birthday once before and I looked for that entry earlier today, wondering if it had been in 2000 or maybe in 1999... nope, it was during the first year of this website's existence -- six years ago ! (Go on, take a look, it's very short but it tells how Adam almost invented pet rocks when he was just a toddler (*grin*).

I guess time does, indeed, fly.

I sent him an email today, telling him that I could remember very clearly when I turned thirty-four -- I was a computer operator at a university, doing graduate work in computers part-time. It was 1977. That's the year Adam had his nineth birthday. There's a big plastic box under our bed that's filled with hundreds and hundreds of snapshots, including some of the pumpkins we carved for Halloween that year. The next spring Adam and Nancy conspired to throw a surprise party to mark my thirty-fifth birthday. (Being very gulible, I was completely surprised.) And that's how old Adam will be one year from now.

Look at that hair. Would you guess that three decades later his hair style would be not to have any -- he's been shaving his head for the past ten years or so. (See wedding picture.)

September 30, 1968 -- just like this year, a Monday -- had only been asleep for an hour or so when -- wake up! water broke! -- we needed to make our hospital run -- by pre-arrangement I phoned my father-in-law to drive us. It was a long drive, from Monticello (NY) to Kingston (NY) -- we had just moved a few weeks earlier because I had taken a teaching job in South Fallburgh High School and we had found an apartment just a couple of blocks from my in-laws in Monticello, but didn't want to switch obstetricians that late in pregnancy. Fortunately, there isn't much traffic at two in the morning. 1968. No birthing centers. In those days fathers were allowed to take care of the paperwork at the admitting desk and then were shunted off to a small waiting room on the maternity floor. Chain-smoking and pacing the floor (yes, all the cliches) and drinking rancid, burnt-tasting hospital coffee and watching a movie about Attila the Hun on a grainy black and white set. Hours pass. Finally word comes -- You have a boy and your wife is fine. I get a glimpse of Beth, foggy with sedatives, being wheeled down a hall from the delivery room to her room -- I get to wave and say Hi! as she passes but I don't think she really realized I was there -- and then I got to look in through a plate glass window to see Adam being tucked into a crib in the nursery.

Thirty-four years ago.

Happy Birthday Adam !

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Opinionated babbling since Sept. 26, 1996