The sixteenth day of the third month of the year of Emergence

You speak about Emergence!

In the year of the our Lord 1900 and sixty something,  the middle part of the state of New Jersey was closing up business for an upcoming snow storm.  I was living in a suburban town of then 21,000 people and working in New York City.  The town was basically a bedroom for the commuters to the big city and lines of cars could always be found making the circle around the local train station every morning before six and in the evenings after seven.  Wives were dropping off or picking up husbands to catch their trains.  It was a ritual. 

I was in New York, as were most of the husbands of the day.  We all had to figure out which of the half dozen or so trains we could catch in order to make it home before the pending storm.  My own personal difference was based on the fact that I was coming home to a wife pregnant with our first child.  By three that afternoon she was going into labor and I had to go into mad scramble mode to get home in time.  It was generally a two hour commute for downtown New York.  Well, as it turned out my daughter took her sweet time arriving but we didn't know it at the time.

To make a long story short, it started to snow before I got home.  We had dinner at my parents and still it was not time to go to the hospital.  By eight that evening we had almost nine inches of the white stuff on the ground and a drive of about 30 minutes to the hospital.  It turned into an hour plus drive in the father in laws car.  It had something called "Positraction" and we thought it would be better in the snow.

My father in law and I spent the rest of the night at the end of a hallway in the hospital while my wife went through all the pains and I guess some indignity associated with our reason to be there in the first place.  By six o'clock in the morning we had about a foot or more of snow on the ground and Heather Willits made her appearance into this world.

Happy Birthday Heather!

I just do not know how women can put up with childbirth and all the pains, work and discomfort of it all.  I just know that my wife did an extraordinary job in having and raising two wonderful kids.  Even if the second one did pick a hurricane during which to make his entrance.  I guess one or both should have become meteorologists.