To prepare for the trip for my delivery and birth,  my parents had asked my grandfather to follow them 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.

My grandfather didn't find parent's 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. Eventually, the moment of confusion  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

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<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....

Kate with Angelina

Yesterday I took Kate to a musical with Angelina ballerina, the mouse who loves ballet.  Kate was enthralled and applauded enthusiastically with the audience after each number.  Afterwards the actors met the children and gave autographs.

Kate pulled from her backpack her book about Angelina, and I asked Angelina to sign the inside cover.  Angelina asked for Kate's name and then wrote, "Kate, Thanks for coming to our show.  Angelina."

As we drove home, Kate asked me in awe,  "How did Angelina know how to spell my name, K-A-T-E."

Wedding Anniversary

Today is the anniversary of the wedding day for Deborah and me.  I still say that the only good decision that I've made in my life was to ask Deborah to marry me.  She dragged me out of my self- absorption and brooding to engage with life:  We left my Hillwood home where I had suffered and found rituals to distract me from my suffering.  We bought a new home and started a family with two delightful, adorable children, William and Kate, because of her daring and persistence, not mine.

Kate Pretending

Kate pretends all day long.  Here she is the bride at a wedding.

Joe Kitts

I attended the memorial service for Joe Kitts  last weekend.

In the late 1980s soon after my first wife and I had started going to Truro Episcopal Church in the midst of a disintegrating marriage, we asked for a conference with Joe Kitts.  My wife was British and, in arranging the meeting with Joe, I thought perhaps his British accent might carry more credibility with my wife than an American's.

Joe's words came with the right accent--and penetrating truth.  The meeting started with good humor.  (I was wearing a Barber that I'd bought in Britain, and Joe said, "Take your skin off and hang it there.")  But within moments, Joe had assessed our troubles and spoke candidly to us.  Joe told my wife in no uncertain terms that she may view our marriage as restraining her freedom, but that she had committed herself to me in an Holy agreement.

The marriage continued its decline, and I sought meetings with Joe alone after my wife had gotten her own apartment.  Joe continued to see me periodically at my request until the spring of 1992 when I finally surrendered to divorce.  On the day of the court proceeding, I attended early morning chapel at Truro, and Joe invited me down to his office afterwards.  I don't remember anything about what he said, but I do remember that I was crying for the first time in his presence.  He encouraged me as a father might to a son facing one of life's defeats.

My life was shattered by a profound sense of failure from the divorce, but my family and friends at Truro offered me hope and healing.  As a token to help me restore my life, my mother gave me a beautiful mantel clock that her grandmother had owned.  It was at least one hundred years old, and as beautiful as it was, it did not keep time well.

Somehow Joe learned of my clock, and I learned that he repaired old clocks as a hobby.  He agreed to repair it for me.  I assumed the clock would remain with him for a while, but within a few days, he told me when I saw him at church, "I've got your clock for you."  He gave it to me along with a new key to keep it wound.

Joe's repair of this clock provided a fitting metaphor for the way he helped to restore me following one of the most painful events of my life.  His strong hands, although not always delicate, worked with wisdom of the master.  Time will heal.  Tomorrow will be better.  And today delivers a chime on the quarter hour.

Kate turned her arm up and pointed to her elbow.  "Daddy look, you can see my elbow."  She straightened her arm and said in amazement, "Now you can't see my elbow."

William cut a chunk of mozzarella cheese for each of us, and Kate brought a piece to me.

She said, "Daddy, here's your monsterella cheese."

William  played a soccer tournament last weekend.  He was on a team with two longtime friends, Heath and Thomas.

He is playing so well, and it's a joy to watch William run with abandon down the pitch, pass to a teammate, and score a goal.

Kate watched patiently with our new dog Bree.  She asked me, "Do caterpillars have bones?"

My family today is saying goodbye to my uncle Ned.

I saw him last just after labor day when I told him about my surgery, and he agreed with me that the surgery would be just "another bump in the road" for me. He was pleased that I had arranged for the operation at Johns Hopkins, where my family had been treated successfully for years. After my own father died when I was eight, Uncle Ned was the most important man to me along with my grandfather. He took my brother and me fishing just weeks after my father's death. He worked with his power tools to carve a black racer from balsa wood for a cub scout project. He arranged for my brother to drive his go-kart in the orchard packing house, and he made an appointment with an expert rifleman to teach my brother how to shoot his rifle. I have more to write about Uncle Ned, and I hope to make some time to do so. I loved him, and I will miss him.

Kate, a little lady bug

My sweet little girl is 14 months old now. She delights in small things--crumbs, ants, spider webs--and we delight in her.

William on the Soccer Team

At five-years old, William loves soccer and playing with his soccer team of five-year-olds. Yesterday, Deborah asked her friend Sharon, the mother of a soccer teammate named Thomas, to take William to the soccer match while Deborah quickly ran an errand. (I was out of town.)

William warned his mother that she should let the soccer coach know that he would be riding with Tommy's mother. He said, "If you don't tell him I'm riding with Tommy's mother, he might think I drove myself here."

Four years ago

Deborah and I are preparing on Monday, January 26, to celebrate the four-year anniversary of the day we brought William home to raise as our child.  He was nine-weeks old on that day. We sat waiting at the adoption agency headquarters for some time before we heard a baby's cry as his foster parents brought him up the stairs.

Last night I helped William fall asleep by lying on his bed beside him. He crawled up on my chest, and the warmth of our bodies lulled him to sleep.  He clutched Bear, the stuffed animal that the foster parents brought with him on that day four years ago.  My four-year old son...how I love him.

William's fourth birthday was Friday. Yesterday (Saturday) we hosted a rambunctious party for him and seven of his colleagues and friends.  We started at the Fairfax city fire department where the fireman gave them a tour, handed out helmets and badges, and let them sit in the truck. William experienced bliss, as he stood beneath the weight of a fire coat and helmet. 

I am fifty-two, nearly a half-century older than my little fireman, but I get younger when I look at the world through his eyes.