Fifty nine years ago today Esther Mae Owens Holmes gave me the gift of life! We all know that the male gender of our species has something to do with this miracle and that life is the God-designed product of both of their genes. So, dad deserves a good bit of credit in this endeavor as well. Still, mom was in the labor and delivery room alone, and with the assistance of a couple of nurses and the ob-gyn, with great effort and excruciating pain, she brought me into this world kicking and screaming. Today, I celebrate her!
Back in the dark ages us men were prohibited from entering the sanctified world of child-birth. When our daughter Elizabeth was born I was segregated in the Father's Waiting Room with one other expectant dad, watching the telephone through clouds of cigarette smoke. The telephone was a direct line to the labor room. So, I could talk to Harriet between contractions. I called her every two minutes: "How's it going? Anything happening? Is the baby here yet?" I remember her saying, through gritted teeth and in that Exorcist evil voice, perhaps head spinning, "How can I ever have this baby with you calling every two minutes. It's your fault I'm going through this anyway----!" I thought it best to hang up and wait for them to call me. Sure enough, a little while later they called to announce Elizabeth's birth. What a blessing. Such joy! Still, I was not there to witness it, so the ordeals of the labor and delivery rooms remained a foreign experience.
It was different when Brian was born just two years later. The Ob-Gyn Floor was no longer off-limits and I was permitted to to be in the labor and delivery room when he came into the world, as Harriet's husband and trained Lamaze coach. Standing at her head, my job was to encourage her and guide her through the breathing exercises in natural birth. Of course, she ended up doing the coaching---I was barely able to stand, woozy from all the reality escalating around me, pale as a ghost, sweating like a mule, hardly able to breathe myself. To see what she did to bring these two beautiful children into this world touched a place in my heart that has never been the same. What a miracle! When the doctor held him up for us to see he let loose with nine months of urine all over my dear wife. She didn't care. We both cried.
That was the day God taught me a few lessons about the labor and delivery process, about the pains of childbirth, about Eve's curse, about what it means to give life to another. It was also the day He impressed me to thank mother on my birthday each year. As an adult, since the birth of our son Brian, I have always given my mother a small gift on my birthday to thank her for the gift of life. I mean, get real! I didn't do anything that day. She did all the work. It was her blood on the OR sheets, the sweat of her brow, and her groans that pushed me forth into this world.
Today, my fifty-ninth birthday, she is in heaven. She lives, eternally, the ultimate gift from God. But, she lives in Christie, Michael, and me, and our families too, the beneficiaries of her labor, the recipients of the gift of life that she and Chester conspired to give us.
It would be a blessing to take her a gift today. As the day moves through its motions, though, I will look to heaven very often and say, "Thanks, Mom!"
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