Tag: personal essay

The end of June 1961 came without so much as one labor pain, and the expectant mother sighed, anxious to meet the stubborn child who refused to make her entrance.

In a small Seattle apartment, my mother sat at a kitchen table. The due date had come and gone. Glancing out the open window, she felt the morning breeze graze her face; it carried the damp, earthy scent of the Pacific Northwest, part rain, part salty sea breeze, and part conifers. Resting her hands on her growing belly, she listened as her mother and her husband carried on a lively conversation about the upcoming birth.

“The baby’s comfortable,” my father teased, glancing at the calendar on the wall. “Maybe the little one is waiting for July 8th. A good day to be born.”

My father was not shy about staking his claim; he decided the baby should be born on his birthday as if I were a pre-ordered gift he had personally ordered and was simply waiting to unwrap.

My grandma, on the other hand, was not to be outdone and decided her birthday would be the perfect day for her grandchild to make an entrance. Sitting next to my mother, she smiled, lifted an eyebrow, and declared, “Oh no. If that baby is born in July, it should be born on July 10th. Everybody knows that’s the best birthday in the family.”

And without warning, my arrival became a family feud in the making as my grandmother and my dad turned it into a lighthearted debate.

My Momma shook her head as her mother and husband laughed and continued their playful banter.

My poor mother, hot, tired, long overdue, and carrying the human prize in this birthday tug of war, pushed herself up from the kitchen table. The exhausted mother-to-be simply told the pair, “If you two are going to argue about it, I will just have my baby on the Fourth of July.” Her delivery was firm and matter-of-fact.

They laughed.

But four days later, that is exactly what she did. Her prediction would become a family legend, repeated for years as the family sat around kitchen tables. But at that moment, it was the exasperated promise of a woman who was tired of being pregnant.

On a busy afternoon, I was born on July 4, 1961, at Fort Lewis’s Madigan General Hospital, bustling with holiday babies. More than twenty babies were born that day, my mother said, as if even the maternity ward had surrendered to the patriotic spirit of the date.

“Must have been a cold October or the men were heading downrange,” one nurse muttered with a knowing smile. 

Honestly, the nurse was probably not wrong.

Outside the post would have been alive with Independence Day celebrations. Flags would have lifted in the breeze. Firecrackers would have snapped in the distance, and a marching band may have been warming up for a parade. Inside the hospital, the mood would have been quieter, with mothers cradling their babies as they celebrated the arrival of their precious cargo.

Inside the maternity ward, the army hospital still ran with military precision: polished floors, the smell of antiseptic, nurses moving briskly through the halls, and starched sheets tucked with perfectly squared corners.

My mother liked to tell the tale with a combination of pride and wonderment.

“You cost $7.50,” she liked to say.

As a child, I was offended and thought it was outrageous. “That’s all I was worth?”

She would laugh and correct me. “That was for my meals. I had to pay for my food.”

I guess I came cheap,  but lunch was extra.

Afterward came the detail that fascinated me most. “Every morning,” she lowered her voice as if she were whispering something scandalous, “I had to make my own bed.”

“In the hospital?” I asked.

“In the hospital,” she stated. “Army corners and all,” she said. “And then the women had to stand next to their beds as the head nurse came through to see if it passed inspection.”

That was one detail that remained with me as vividly as if I had witnessed it myself.  My mother, exhausted and sore after delivering her first child, was pulling stiff white sheets across a hospital bed and tucking each corner with care. The Army life did not loosen its grip for labor pains or newborn cries. Even motherhood in that world came with precise rules. Discipline lived alongside tenderness; duty held at the bedside.

I was an Army brat from the beginning, and my father’s service affected the family as a whole. I was born into that rhythm. Born on Independence Day, surrounded by uniforms and regulation corners.

At family gatherings, Dad would chuckle and say, “Well, she almost had the good sense to be born on her dad’s birthday.”

And Grandma would counter, “Or her grandmothers.”

And my Momma would simply say, “She chose her own day.”

And maybe I did claim my own day; I kept them waiting, ignored the family vote, except my mama’s, of course, and showed up when I was good and ready.

Outside, fireworks split the darkened sky with flashes of gold and red, their brilliance blooming and fading against the darkness. And somewhere between the sizzle of sparklers in little hands, I realized the Fourth of July suited this independent and stubborn gal, and I’ve been doing things on my own ever since that day.