To prepare for the trip for my delivery and birth,  my parents had asked my grandfather to follow them in  to the nearest hospital--28 miles away in Cumberland, Maryland. My parents owned a used car that was not reliable for a trip of that long distance.  

Just a few hours after midnight, my mother or father called my grandfather to tell him the time had come. The early morning of August 9 was still dark as my parents dropped off my older brother at my grandparent's house. Soon after they left for the hospital, and my grandfather stepped into his car, backed out of his driveway, and made his way to route 28, the main road and the quickest way to get to Cumberland. 

He had left a little later than my parents but not so much later that they would have to wait long on the road if the car had broken down. The road travelled by the South Branch of the Potomac river, past what was known as the Rocks, a beautiful cliff rising by the river as it flowed toward Cumberland. The road took him thorough the small West Virginia towns of Springfield and Fort Ashby and into Maryland. It was a curvy, windy road as it avoided the mountains and followed the valley and hollows. 

About 45 minutes after leaving Romney, he arrived at the hospital, no doubt relieved that he hadn't discovered his daughter and her husband beside the road with a broken car. 

But then the following scene occurred. I was there but have no memory of it, of course, but I can construct what follows because I heard the story regularly from my mother on each anniversary of my birth.

He didn't find their car in the parking lot when he arrived, and he probably hurried in to the admissions room to ask where he could find them. 

Where can I find the Gainers, he asked. Peggy Mac Gainer is about to deliver a baby, and she is my daughter. The attendant looked down at her book and back up to the expecting grandfather. 

We don't have a Gainer. 

Did they come when someone else was at the desk? 

No, I've been here the whole night, and we have only had two other admissions--one at around midnight complaining of terrible indigestion and another about 2:00 with a bad summer cold, probably pneumonia. I don't know. We don't have any Gainers, and we haven't had any women expecting a baby. Are you sure you are at the right place?

My grandfather experienced a moment of panic: how is that possible. There's only one hospital in Cumberland. 

It turned out that he had somehow in his hurry passed my parents without either of them noticing. Somehow the confusion all became miraculously solved.

Thus my life started with  confusion--an older generation overtaking the younger--and eventually  unfolded into relieved discovery. My mother was amused and told the story of "the trip to the hospital," as if it were a modern, personal, comical version of Moses found in the bullrushes

Administered Prices: Hearings, Eighty-fifth Congress, First ..., Parts 19-21

By United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on the Judiciary. Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly:

Laurell A Gainer has purchased the Corbett Drug Store in Romney and plans enlarged prescription service by combining the Corbett prescription department with his own department. A centralized prescription department in his present store will be on one side of the street with the Rexall agency  directly across on the other side .

https://books.google.com/books/content?id=hYPQ_wIioMcC&pg=PA10809&img=1&zoom=3&hl=en&sig=ACfU3U1106Im3yd5FQGaQHeLq5hdwt91xA&ci=46%2C48%2C894%2C437&edge=0

https://books.google.com/books/content?id=hYPQ_wIioMcC&pg=PA10809&img=1&zoom=3&hl=en&sig=ACfU3U1106Im3yd5FQGaQHeLq5hdwt91xA&ci=452%2C1331%2C405%2C142&edge=0

<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=hYPQ_wIioMcC&lpg=PA10809&ots=tVJpgla2Jv&dq=gainer%20pharmacy%20in%20romney%20wv&pg=PA10809&ci=452%2C1331%2C405%2C142&source=bookclip"><img src="https://books.google.com/books/content?id=hYPQ_wIioMcC&pg=PA10809&img=1&zoom=3&hl=en&sig=ACfU3U1106Im3yd5FQGaQHeLq5hdwt91xA&ci=452%2C1331%2C405%2C142&edge=0"/></a>

To Begin Now Is When

Let may say, not again, but when

Now is Holy, Holy, Holy--that is,

To begin the now of no

End, when when is When

And when is wind, is

Holy, Holy, Holy, the first 

Ripple to begin in water,

First tick to move the

Pendulum to tock.

Is it now One, or is it

Naught, the first step through

A door, or is it zero and

Stillness at last answering...

When do beginnings

Start?

Today is the fifty year anniversary of my father's death.  This was such a breaking point in my life I feel I must observe it in some way.  For a while, I had planned to take off work on this day, but obligations kept me from observing the day as a personal holiday.  I wonder if my mother, brother, and sister are aware of this significant turning point in our lives.

My grandfather told me that on the morning after my father's death he looked into his yard and saw the rose bush had bloomed outside the window.  It was beautiful, he had noticed.

My father died fifty years ago on June 2, 1965.  The death notice for Laurell A. Gainer, a pharmacist, age 34.

William's soccer team won the championship of a tournament this past weekend!

Shoulder pads

On Friday evening we watched a family movie about an ordinary kid determined to play with Notre Dame football team.  William loved the football playing scenes and he imitated them all during the movie.  

At some point he changed into his football jersey, and after the movie was finished, I noticed that his shoulders had pads of some sort.  I said, "William, what are those pads on your shoulders?"  

"Socks," he said. 

While driving home from work today and I passed the office buildings and shopping mall in Tyson's corner, I suddenly thought of my best college friends and a single thought crossed my mind:  I wouldn't recognize who I've become--traveling as I was in a business suit from work as a government bureaucrat.

These startling words came to me, I suppose, because yesterday I attended a retirement ceremony for someone I've known at work for almost my entire time in my job.  She was retiring after 28 years, and I've been working for 27 years at the same agency....