Early Morning Memories

Two weeks.  How that time had stretched out, stretched out beyond belief. Those two weeks of waiting and wishing seemed like forever.  What discomfort could be worse?  Sitting here this morning  I muse on life 53 years ago; the memories come rushing back.  Today my son has arrived (survived; isn't that what life is all about) through another year of being -

---"Just be" one reads.   "Be Here Now" by Ram Dass.  Oh, how the mind bounces along when we are sitting idle as I am this morning!

Memory of only two days before he was born come flashing back.  I'd been to the doctor, while Mom cared for my two little girls.  I was in total misery with my body.  The 'due' date was two weeks past.   Arriving home I faced the fact that this baby had decided to NOT ever be born.  I cried.  I dead-seriously had come to this conclusion!

I was innocently distracted by my miserable, waddling self that I didn't really pay much attention to what little Anna was saying to me,  "Tom Haney killed, he died"; then Mom dismissed her words as 'just talking/chattering' as she smoothed my exhausted ruffles.

  In awhile I took myself and my body's burden  next door to my house to start supper.  In  a bit of time, husband B arrived home from work,  but didn't come inside.  Mom arrived at the front door at this time also and met me in the kitchen.  I was innocently unaware of the drama that was soon to be.

Husband finally came in the door and I could see he'd been crying.  Mom spoke up to tell me Tom,  his boss, was DEAD  "What? What are you saying?  No, No, that can't be", I said.  I'd just been with Tom and his family two nights before and he had commented with a laugh that my baby was a boy! Even I didn't know that.  Said he could tell definitely because my butt was so wide!  How embarrassed I was by his remark; for I too was very aware of my unwieldy self.

At this time of my life, I'd had only two experiences of encountering death.  Thus it was very traumatic to hear Mom's words.  At that moment I didn't remember little Anna's earlier pronouncement either.

 Tom was older than B and I but not by very much.  He and his wife had two young children also.  He supervised the work of grounds keeping at the city's golf course.  The city had just purchased a new mower that cut wider swathes of grass.  The workday was ending, when Tom went to demonstrate the mechanics of this mower, while it set inside the wire-caged garage and was warning them of how dangerous this new mower could be, especially on the side of hills.  Why what happened I don't know.  No one knows, except at that instant a tragedy occurred when Tom, instructing the employees, stood between the machine and the fenced wall.  Suddenly, the mower moved in reverse, quickly pinning Tom  and crushing him to death, while all the workers watched in horror and unable to do anything to help Tom.


Thus ended a young and happy family and the tragedy that has been remembered by me this morning.  Two days later my son was born after only twenty minutes of labor;  we named him Thomas, in honor and remembrance of Tom Haney,  a kindly, caring man who treated everyone with respect and said to us both how he would "love to have a son", the last words I heard him say.


This was a slice of life when Tragedy, Ecstasy and Relief moved hand in hand.  So today I celebrate the start of my son's fifty-fourth year of his life.

My Best Wishes and love for him, another very hard worker of our world, this world with all the experiences that life entails.


Happy Birthday, Son.  I love you dearly.