I was whisked away to the labor room in Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, TX. I was given an expensive bracelet, ice chips and a white gown that closed in the back. I asked if I could just go home and watch �Sisters�. �Sisters� was that show about sisters that was so good I didn�t want to miss it. But I did. I got over it.

I remember a few friends coming and going and a big haze of pain and heat and sweat dribbling down my back. I remember feeling too alone for the event. There should have surely been a far bigger celebration, a room full of family and people. This was such a big event. But in my heart there was a huge party, so many feelings and emotions that I could not contain them. I was nervous but overjoyed at the thought of being a mother, having a tiny human being to love endlessly and completely. I longed to give someone else a mother like I never had, to be that mother I had longed for �for someone else. I wanted to somehow fix all the wrongs in the world, by doing that one right in my own life.

I tried to push that little baby into the world myself for hours. He was stubborn�.strongwilled� The doctor�s whisked me away to the delivery room, a few nurses hanging on the side of the moving gurney for dear life. I recall how he said he could see the head and then it would go away. I recall still wondering if I was having a girl or a boy but realizing I was making love, in a way that some may never get to do. I was bringing life into the world. The doctors attached a suction cup to the top of my baby�s head, slid forceps like giant salad prongs around the top of the baby�s head and I only recall the lightening force of pain and anticipation dancing together at the same moment. The room was white and the light was bright and then I was told it�s a boy! I cried and then he cried and then his father cried. There was no greater gasp of relief to hear my own child finally crying.

He was handed over to us all wrapped up�his little head smashed and pointy from so much effort to come into this world. We immediately nicknamed him �cuke� for cucumber because he was brought into this world with salad tongs and his little head was longer than it was wide. This quickly resolved itself because baby�s heads do that. But he was first my little �cuke� and forever my son. He had lots of hair and it stuck up like a little shark fin down the center of his head for weeks. He was small and his little hands were like the most perfect things I had ever seen to date.

I remember laying next to him�touching his belly, his chest, his arms and legs�and his face. He loved to have his face caressed and of course I kissed him endlessly. His skin was so perfect, his face so beautifully perfect. I kept whispering a thousand thank you�s to God, to the powers that be�to the universe�to anyone that just might hear me and still understand why I would have the nerve to ask that they, him, someone, anyone�keep you safe forevermore.