My Son's Birhtday @Solsticepublish

Today is June 4th.  What is significant about this day you may ask?  Lots of things.  In 1942 the Battle of Midway marking the turning point in the Pacific War took place.  In 1989 the Tiananmen Square massacre took place in China.  In 1940 the Dunkirk Evacuation saving hundreds of thousands of British and French Soldiers ended.  In 1919 Congress passed the 19th Amendment to the Constitution allowing women to have the right to vote.  From Hollywood, Angelina Jolie was born on this day in 1975.  And in a hospital in Michigan in 1991 my first born child and only son was born.  I should have seen it as a sign of things to come when he was born in the middle of the night.  He has always been one to stay up late…and as a child kept us up late when he wouldn’t go to sleep.  I’m told that you make your mistakes with your first child and figure it out with the others.  That night I made a rookie mistake.  After he was delivered the doctor asked if I wanted to cut the cord.  I was terrified and said, “What do you think I’m paying you for?  I’m not going near him with something sharp!”  So they cut the cord and cleaned him up.  Then they put him under a heat lamp which calmed him right down.  Here comes the mistake.  The nurse asked if I wanted to pick him up.  I eagerly agreed and lifted my son for the first time.  As soon as he was out of the heat he screamed like I really had cut him.  I moved him around but it was no use.  Then the nurse took him and set him next to my wife on the delivery table.  He calmed right down.  From then on he associated me picking him up with crying and my wife holding him contentment.  It did not stop at infancy.  When he would be in his play pen he would throw his toys at me.  He once caused an accident when he threw his bottle from the back seat and hit me in the head.  The blow made me turn my head for an instant and I rear-ended the car in front of me.  There was a popular show back then called “Dinosaurs” when the baby would throw things at the dad from his high chair and yell, “Not the Mama!  Not the Mama!”  That was my son!  And it all began when I was foolish enough to take him out of the warmer first.  With my next two children I let the nurse take them out and give them to my wife.  I only held them once they calmed down.  As a result, they liked me fine as babies.  When my son was turning 11 I was out of town in Winnipeg, Manitoba on a temporary assignment.  The people I was working for were so pleased with my work that they offered to take me with them for a weeklong trip to Lake of the Woods for a guided fishing trip with all the food and beer I wanted.  It would mean missing my son’s birthday.  I spoke with him on the phone and could not bring myself to say I would miss it just so I could go on a trip.  So I finished my work, collected my last check and drove 22 straight hours to get back to Michigan a half hour before he woke on his birthday so the first face he saw that day would be mine.  I was his hero then.  My status has faded over the years but my love for that boy hasn’t.  They say the ultimate proof of whether you made a good decision or not lies in whether you would make the same decision again knowing the consequences.  I look at my son and know life would not be the same without him.  He means the world to me and I wish him a Happy Birthday.