Happy Mother’s Day – My Birth Story

I’m participating in a project called Mommy’s Piggy Tales where I’ll be writing stories about my childhood once a week for 15 weeks, starting with birth and ending with graduation in the hopes that my children, and possibly my children’s children, will one day appreciate it.

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My mom’s first Mother’s Day was a doozy!  It was the day I was born. 

 

My parents were sitting at home, watching a show about earthquakes when my mom realized she was in labor.  After a brief discussion, they decided to finish watching the show before they went to the hospital.  (As a child, I always wondered how they could have been so calm – I thought you were supposed to rush to the hospital, running red lights as you went – but now I understand that labor can take a while, so there wasn’t necessarily a need to rush.)

 

When the show was over and my parents knew all they needed to know about earthquakes, they proceeded to the hospital.  As they were walking up to the door of the hospital, they passed a homeless man in a, possibly, inebriated state.  “Haaapppy Mother’s Day!” he cried joyously to my mom, waving his arm in the air like a windmill.  (My mom’s re-enactment of this is quite good.)

 

When I was born, expectant fathers still waited in the waiting room for news of their new child.  As my father waited, he watched Ben Hur.  Apparently, it’s an even longer movie when you’re waiting to become a daddy, although my dad was actually pretty lucky because my mom was in labor (at least at the hospital) for only about 4 hours.  So, he didn’t have too long to wait.

 

My first name has been my name since well before I was born: my dad says he knew what he wanted to name a daughter since he was a teenager.  The first time he was allowed to see me, though, it wasn’t my name that popped into his head, but <a common name for men in another country>.  He didn’t know why he thought of that name, but that name became his nickname for me from then on.  It has gotten me some odd looks through the years, but I don’t mind a bit.

 

Since this was the days before ultrasounds, my parents didn’t know my gender, but my mom says she absolutely knew I’d be a girl.  Lucky for them, she was right because they had no boy’s name picked out.

 

They had a first name for me, but no middle name and they had no good ideas.  They really needed a list of potential names, but had no baby name books.  So they used the next best thing: the phone book.  They looked up “Johnson” because it’s a common last name and would likely have a lot of possibilities and read through the list until they found a name they liked.  So, somewhere out there is a <My Middle Name> Johnson whom I’m named after. Thanks to her!

 

My question now is: when you’re born on Mother’s Day, how do you top that the next year?