A birth and a birthday September 1, 2011
Posted by Hampton Morgan in General.trackback
Last weekend I was in North Carolina, celebrating my father’s 90th birthday when news came that our first grandchild had arrived. My wife and I had agreed she would stay on in Pennsylvania to help our daughter and son-in-law while I joined my four sisters and assorted grand- and great-grandchildren for my dad’s birthday party. It was neat getting the phone call announcing the birth while visiting with the man who at 90 had just become a great-grandfather for the sixth time.
My father was born before the Great Depression and my granddaughter during what is arguably still the Great Recession. The world into which he was born in 1921 was still getting acquainted with electricity, cars and airplanes. The world into which she has been born is neck-deep in a love affair with digital gadgets that are reshaping communications and the way we do relationships. My father and I talk on cell phones and send emails to each other. How will my granddaughter communicate with her daughter in 60 years?
At the birthday party some of us had prepared gifts based on the number 90. My Lutheran pastor brother-in-law offered a meditation based on Psalm 90. I had prepared 90 fond memories of things I did with my dad. One of the grandsons, a child of divorce, ripped all our hearts out talking about how his grandfather was the most important male in his life. The great-grandson present helped his great-grandfather blow out the candles on the cake. We sang my dad’s favorite hymns and presented him, an ardent reader, with a Nook.
Meanwhile, my determined-to-have-a-natural-childbirth daughter learned why they call it “labor.” But she got through it with lots of encouragement from her husband and no medication, welcoming the seven pound daughter after only six difficult hours of labor. Six hundred miles away, I showed off her photos the next morning at breakfast.
I left North Carolina on Monday morning at six o’clock and was holding my first grandchild at half past two in the afternoon in Pennsylvania. I have to agree with my wife: she is the most beautiful baby in the history of the whole world.
I shall count myself fortunate if my granddaughter gets to know her great-grandfather. He is the most important male in my life too. Although I will someday tell her about life before computers and smartphones, he can tell her about how seven children and two parents coped with life during the worst economic years in our nation’s history. And if she wants to know about life before 1921, she can always ask her other great-grandfather. He turned 96 in July!
