Pandemic Birthday

With the pandemic, everyone’s celebrations are necessarily subdued. For my 60th birthday, I had dinner with my 96 year-old mother – just the two of us.

Patrick: “60 years ago I was born. Tell me the story.”

Margery: “So it’s 9 o’clock in the morning on the 31st of March and I’m in the labor room. And I’m in the bed. And Richard and Dr. O’Connell are chatting away ignoring me and whatever my problems were and I finally said, ‘Dr. O’Connell, in two more pains I’m going to have a baby.’ Now we’re nowhere near the delivery room, we’re in the labor room. Dr. O’Connell, who was a lovely man, said, “Well, if you do, I’ll buy you a Coke.’ and left.”

Patrick: “And left?”

Margery: “And left!”

Margery: “And so then I had two pains and your head starts to come into the world. So Richard -- I would have stayed to see my child born -- but Richard went to find Dr. O’Connell. So Dr. O’Connell’s gone. Richard’s gone.”

Patrick: “Are you in the room alone?”

Margery: “No, there was a nurse there and she delivered the baby.”

Patrick: “O’Connell didn’t get back in time?”

Margery: “No, I never saw him until later in the day.”

Patrick: “So Dad missed the whole thing?”

Margery: “He missed the whole thing, but deliberately. That was not Richard’s sort of thing.”

Patrick: “Back then, the men were expected to wait in the waiting room. It wasn’t a shared thing where they cut the umbilical cord and all that?”

Margery: “Yes, but that was fine with me. It was the easiest birth I had.”

Patrick: “Did you get the Coke?”

Margery: “Yes, he came in the afternoon with the Coke. And I got billed for the delivery room -- automatically of course. I thought, I’m not paying for the delivery room, I never saw the delivery room. I complained and they took off $25.”

So there you have it, my birthday story, a moment we shared 60 years ago -- just the two of us.