It seems like only yesterday

   It was twelve years ago today. I was standing there in a surgical smock, mask and cap. I even had the little paper booties over my shoes. Then the nurse came out and told me that they were unable to give my wife an epidural, so she would have to go under a general anesthetic for her caesarian section. The offshoot: I would not be allowed into the operating room, but would be relegated to standing in the waiting area looking ridiculous.
   Our family doctor scurried in, and asked me where Pat was. We didn't know she had left standing orders at the hospital to be called, any time day or night, when Pat went into labour. I indicated that the patient had been moved to the operating theater, and she ran, she ran full speed down the hallway in the direction I had gestured. I still have the vision clearly in my mind of her going through the swinging doors, hopping on one foot, trying to slip a paper bootie over one of her shoes.
   I don't know how long it took. I'm sure it wasn't too long; these things are pretty routine these days. Seemed like a while, though, before they rolled a bed and a cart topped with a plexiglass hospital bassinette back into the recovery room. Pat was still asleep, and I stood beside her bed with my mother, and held my newborn son, and cried, and cried, and cried.



   Happy twelfth Birthday, Matthew. You are the best thing in the whole wide world, and your mother and I love you with everything that we are.



tags:Family