A Front Porch Entrance: The Birth of my Belle Part 7

I could feel the engine of our Ford Taurus misfiring as we waited for the large parking gate to slide open. Our mechanic who had replaced our compressor the week before had informed me that our car was only running on five of its six cylinders. I had dryly responded that that was my life. After he informed me, the husband of a pregnant wife who was due any day, that the compressor in my only vehicle was bad and would have to be fixed to a tune of $1000. To add injury to insult it would take three days to fix. That Friday when we picked up the car, the mechanic had assured me that the car would have more then enough power to run on five cylinders. We were going to put that to the test now!

It seems that cars and deliveries of children in my life must somehow be correlated. Twenty-two months before the day before my son was born, we had sold a car. I can still remember Katherine, nine months pregnant in the hot Dallas heat, sitting in the front seat while I had conducted the transaction.

Now Katherine was sitting in the front seat of our five cylinder car having a massive contraction. As she moaned in pain, I glanced into the rearview mirror to see my wide-eyed almost two-year old in the back seat. I wasn’t sure if he was scared, confused, or just sleepy. He probably thought we were going on vacation, except for his mother’s moaning and panting in the front seat. He clung tightly to Fluppy, his worn stuffed dog, while sucking furiously on his “woobie.” (Kramer men do not have pacifiers, its too sissy; they have “woobies!”)

“Should I call Suz, now?” “Yes,” Katherine replied. I dialed while the car coasted out of the garage. The phone rang. A sleepy voice answered, “Hello.” “Suz, it’s Michael, we are on the way to the birth-center. Katherine has been in labor for a while and it is progressing fast. Can you meet us there?” She said that she would be there as soon as she had changed her clothes and brushed her teeth. The plan had been for Suzanne, Katherine’s sister, to meet us at the birth-center in order to take care of Luke. She had witnessed Luke’s birth and was excited of being part of the birth of his sibling.

The streets were deserted and the lights flashed an eerie yellow. I slowly began to accelerate. I then called each of our parents, they had both requested to be contacted when labor began. My conversations were concise and three minutes later, I was done.