July 23

Good evening! 

This is a hard one to write.  It's my eldest son's birthday.  He is fifty-one years old, or will be at some time between nine o clock and ten thirty tonight.  I believe he was born just before ten but I could be wrong. I was too busy to look at the clock. My husband was there beside us, swathed and garbed. I remember looking up at a pair of such KIND eyes..it was a shock to realize that they were my husband's.

After my baby was born, they took him away and did a lot of cleaning up. Then I was stowed away into a room at the Alameda County Hospital (could that possibly be correct?) and after a time, a nurse came into the twilit room with a little bundle and laid it down beside me.  My baby and I had a nice little love-fest of communing for a time, before the nurse came to take him away "so you can get your sleep." I did not feel that was necessary, but I trusted the hospital to care for him till morning.

After a few days, Alexander and I went home with Theodore to our rented digs on Arch Street in Berkeley.  That house is still there, and I have driven by to see it within the last few years.  Benjamin took me. I had a great pediatrician, Dr Grossman,who was as new at doctoring as I was at mothering, but together we made a success of my breastfeeding my skinny little baby and he was plump and rosy in no time.  It is harder to realize that it's fifty one years since Dr Grossman started his practice than to believe that Alexander is fifty one years old.

Motherhood is still my greatest accomplishment, though I was not very good at it.  But it brought me so much happiness that I'd never be able to tell it all. I will never forget the absolutely exhalted feeling I had after Alexander  was born.  I was very very happy.  YAZZYBEL