40

Amy will be forty tomorrow! This time forth years ago I was watching Lucy Show on TV and sewing a housecoat. She was due the 9th. It was a dark and stormy night... It really was - the wind was high and it was cold. We had one false alarm to the hospital and were sent back home. Our front storm door nearly became unhinged whilst I was struggling to get outside in the middle of a labor pain. Later that night we returned to the hospital and I was kept happily unaware of what was going on till she arrived. I do remember one moment in time in the delivery room.  How can you have a baby and not know it? I must have been really knocked out. That was before everyone was having epidurals and the doctors knew almost to the ounce how big the baby would be. She was a bit bigger than Dr. Beaton (Dr. Kenneth) expected. I remember seeing her for the first time. Never ever again another feeling like that! So beautiful! My Lord, a baby girl! And dimples even then! And we didn't know she was a girl beforehand either! Now everyone can know what color to plan a nursery... So she became Amy Leigh, not Bryan Lee. (She was named for the Bobby Darrin song "Amy," and Leigh for the family name Lee of many of Paul's family members.) It hardly seems like it should be forty years - it's gone by too fast. I'll admit some of the years couldn't go by fast enough, but what parent hasn't thought that when they had teenagers? Poor girl - she had the first, best, last and worst. The only child - she got it all. She turned out pretty good, though, I think. My sweet Amy.