In honor of my son's Thirty-third Birthday I would like to share an article that had previously been published on a now nonexistent web site.

The date was October 6, 1968. As we rode to church in the VW van, my Dad didn’t seem to notice the bumps in the road or the railroad tracks that we had crossed. The van was little more than a metal box on wheels and I felt each little ripple in the road as we traveled along. I was nine months pregnant, feeling more exhausted than usual, and I really didn’t feel up to going to church. Yet, I dreaded staying home alone even more.

My husband was in the Marine Corps. and far away in Okinawa. I had been alone for most of the pregnancy living the last three months in my parent’s home.

That night I experienced one of the longest church services that I had ever endured. Time passed so slowly that I felt I was living through a very bad dream. I wished I had had the courage to stay at my parent’s house even if it meant being alone in the eight room row house that I had once called home.

All that I wanted now was for the minister to close the service and allow me the blissful peace of the bed awaiting me. After what seemed to me an eternity, the service was over and we had returned home. However, I couldn’t rest. I spent a fitful night in bed knowing that something was wrong. This was my first child; actually, I was a child. Seventeen and about to become a Mom, I was scared to death. As I lay in my bed, waiting for the sun to rise along with my Mom, I remember thinking, “I don’t want to do this. This is all a very bad dream. If I go to sleep, I’ll wake up and this will all be gone.” I didn’t. It wasn’t.

At 7:30 the next morning, I called my Mom. “I think I’m in labor.” I phoned my mother-in-law and she rushed to meet us at the hospital.

At 1:30 that afternoon, my son was born.

I don’t remember much about the delivery. Thirty-three years ago they believed in keeping the Mom comfortable by putting her into a state of semi-consciousness during labor and delivery. So, my memories are sketchy. I do remember being told, “This is it. One big push and you’ll have your baby.”

It was so difficult! Barely out of childhood myself, I was panicked and fearful.

“I can’t.” “You have to.” So push I did.

My life changed at 1:30 in the afternoon on October 7, 1968. My baby boy became my first born, and I fell madly in love with him at first sight. I was addicted to motherhood.

He was so soft, so cuddly, so sweet. I wanted to hold him, snuggle him to me, kiss and nurture him. Nothing, nothing had ever fulfilled me as much as this moment.

Looking back, that baby is gone. There are no bassinets, no cribs, no rattles, and no bottles.

Diapers gave way to jeans, and goo-goo’s gave way to rebel yells. As the years passed, passion for bottles were exchanged for other passions. Soon my baby stood before me as a six foot, blonde haired, blue eyed young man about to be married.

The years have evaporated into memories. The memories are all that are left of the baby that I held to my face and snuggled. But, with those memories my baby becomes a living experience, lived over and over as I choose to visit the past locked away in my heart. As long as I live and as long as I am able to remember, my son, as my baby, remains alive in my memories and in my heart.

I can live in the present, the here and now and enjoy my son as a man. Watching him love and care for his daughters. Listening to him talk about his family, his work and the things that are important to him, I am aware of who he is present tense.

Yet I can also go back within the memories of my heart and mind and see my precious baby, hold him close to me, smell the baby smells, and remember his sweet small body.

So it is with the memories of those we love. They are locked in the recesses of our hearts and minds. We are able to revisit special places and loved ones by simply choosing to remember. And as long as we live, so will they.

Memory, a beautiful gift from a loving Heavenly Father.