Every year on May 20, I get a call from my Mum at 10:05. I don’t remember when she started doing this, at least twenty years ago. Over the years, I have heard several versions of my birth story during these calls. Every year, I think I should tape it.
Mum starts the story by saying that, at this time, however many years ago, she had just had her first child and it was a baby girl. She had prayed for months foe a baby girl with blue eyes, and there I was! She had thought to call me Robin Lynn, but my Dad had immediately started coming up with odd twists on the name. So, Mum decided to call me Susan, after a famous movie star.
She was in labor with me for nearly a day, she thought I would never come. Dad fell asleep in the waiting room and the nurses sent him home. My Mum was mortally offended that he actually left.
Sometimes, when Mum would tell this story, she would switch the time to 11:05. I asked her once about this. I was born before daylight savings time was adopted. So, I was born at 10:05. But, because of Daylight Savings Time, the clock time would be an hour later.
This year, for the first time since Mum started doing this, she didn’t call. I didn’t realize how much I looked forward to this story until I didn’t get that phone call this year. She has a lot to do in the morning, to get ready for the day. She has to shower and go through the complicated process of feeding herself through a feeding tube. She has to put creams on her skin to counteract the effects of chemotherapy, she has to prepare and take her medicines, clean her trach and around the area where her feeding tube is inserted. It takes a few hours every morning. I totally get why she couldn’t call.
But it was a real wake up call for me. I wonder whether I can get her to tell me the story, even if it isn’t my birthday, so I can record it. When I talked to her about it last night, she was too tired. And she said she would tell me the story next year. I’m glad she thinks she will still be here, that’s a good sign, right? I hope she is right.
The other thing that she has told me is that all three of her kids were born on Tuesdays, between 10 and 11 in the morning. Which I always thought was pretty interesting. All three of us also have a mole in the same place on our right breast. So does my Mum. My sister’s two children also have that same mole. My brother’s kids don’t, though.