My third son,Benjamin

Good noon! 

Yesterday was the birthday of my third son.  He is forty five years old and is still a pride and joy to me.

When he was born, I was in excellent health, and everyone said to me, "Oh, my third was the easiest birth I had. You'll have an easy time!"

The night before he came, my sister no. 4 was in town with us. My husband took us for a ride and pitched down Henry St. Hill at a rapid clip, braking hard at the bottom and tossing me about a bit.  We had a beautiful twilight ride and rode out by UCSD, by those eucalyptus trees off Gilman Drive where several white owls rose up and took off just as we went by. 

I often wondered what those owls portended, but they were definitely distinctive and beautiful as they flew into the opal colored air.

We went home and to bed, but at about 11:00 that night my water broke and I knew the baby was going to come. The first two had been quite fast, so I expected to see him pretty soon.  We were cautioned by the hospital not to go until the pains were so and so apart. My sister had a taxi to the airport on schedule for that early morning, so could not baby sit the other boys. I called the baby sitter, Burchard, and as soon as she arrived we were off.

My gynecologist was vacationing in Silver City, CO, so they called his partner, who was occupied elsewhere but would come over when he could. Oh dear.  Throughout the early morning things got worse. The nurse finally came in and said,"He's on his way." (Meaning, I am sure, that he'd finished with his other baby and at home having a shower and leisurely breakfast.) My pains were excruciating and the nurses were running around like chickens. One mean nurse kept coming over when I had a pain and it felt like she was pushing the baby back in. I finally begged her,
"PLEASE call another floor of the hospital and have any other MD come over and deliver this baby. And PLEASE stop pushing the baby back in. Just let him come." She replied, "I am not pushing him in; I am just widening your cervix." Sure, nurse. I'm dumb enough to buy that.

Finally the doctor hastened in, they put my legs in the position, he sat down, and out came baby. In just the time it took for me to write it. Widening my cervix, my aunt Fanny.

Anyway, recovery was sweet.  They brought in my baby after a time, and he was beautiful. "Here is your leetle Preence," said the nurse as she brought him in. She said that everyone in the nursery was exclaiming at his beauty.  He was unusually perfect for a newborn, I must say.

As time went by he became my right hand at home. The only bad thing he ever did was break off all the chimneys on my tiny chinaware English cottages, which I had left within the reach of him in his cage.
It was not really a cage; it was a small bed with a high rail and tall off the ground, and served as a playpen when I was in the kitchen within sight.

He could find anything in the house and knew where everything was, unlike his mama.  Once I had to leave in a hurry and could not find my keys. "Keys," he said and went over to the dresser and found my keys where he'd undoubtedly stashed them some time before. This is when he was barely old enough to walk.

When he could hardly sit up and toddle about, I watched one day when he took up the three parts of a very complicated adult-level three dimensional puzzle, and as I stood amazed, he put it together once, took it apart, put it together again, and then again. All in silence and secret. He knew something the rest of us did not know.

When he was two and a half or so, at church, he followed his brother Alexander up the aisle when Alex was singing with the choristers.  When the boys took their seats facing each other across the chancel, Benjamin stood in front of Alex, and smiled, pointing him out to all of us out there in the congregation. I hastily went up and removed him.

Since those days, there have been plenty of times when, in great need, we depended on his steady presence and his presence of mind. When his older brother, Gregory, was so ill, Ben was a mainstay for his dad and me.  Thank God he was there.

Now he is a bachelor living on a hard-pan garden in Concord,CA, oh so far away. And we miss him.  But I do have photographs and I do look at them and remember that little angel of long time gone. YAZZYBEL