Tomorrow is my niece’s ninth birthday. It’s hard to imagine that Rory has gotten to nine so fast. Anyway, I’d like to take this opportunity to wish her a Happy Birthday.
Time flies, of course. All these tikes are growing up so fast. I have another nine year old niece, Estie, on my wife’s side. I also have a nephew, Grant, that is a junior in high school and a niece, Sarah, who is in her early 20s! And of course, Rory’s sister, Marly is 4.
The birthday of Rory is especially special, for me, because of what happened that evening.
Rory was born just before midnight on that January 17 - when she joined the 17th Birthday Club . And when we knew she was going to come, it was decided that my dad would stay at the house and I would go to his house to keep him company that evening. He was a little apprehensive, of course, awaiting the arrival of his daughter’s daughter.
That night has taken on special significance in our family. Whenever we gather to celebrate Rory’s birthday – as we did last weekend at Fuddrucker’s – invariably the topic of conversation will turn to the fact that the evening became a special father-son event for me and my dad.
When I say ‘event,’ really that is a misnomer. We didn’t really do anything fantastic. Just a father and son hanging out.
At first, we talked a lot (really he talked, I listened). He was wondering how things were going. He was reflecting on how time had passed so fast since my sister, herself, was a little tike.
After a while, it became clear that we needed some entertainment to help fill the waiting time. We turned on cable and found the classic western, “Silverado.” The actor, Brian Dennehy, who plays a somewhat likable villain in that movie, is one of my dad’s favorite actors. So, we enjoyed watching that.
When “Silverado” went off – and we still didn’t have news – we found “A Few Good Men.” That’s another classic. You can see, we were looking for a couple guys’ movies that night and a couple good men found a couple good films!
Any reminiscing about that evening ultimately turns to mentions of Dennehy from “Silverado” and Jack Nicholson and the classic “You Can’t Handle the Truth” scene from “A Few Good Men.”
Long about the time that Col. Jessup was making his speech from the witness stand, we got some good news that, just before midnight, Rory was born. Mother and daughter (and dad) were doing fine.
So was grandma. And granddad.
And as for the Uncle, he was okay, too.
JG
Originally posted 1/16/2013
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