I started keeping a diary about two months after my third retirement. There were two reasons for this enterprise—one noble, and one not-so-noble.

My noble reason:  holding myself accountable for making each day count.  When you are still working (on the clock) you need to make every minute count.  But when you retire, you only need to make each day count.  Stop sweating the minutes and hours—otherwise, what’s the point of retirement?  Yet, retirement is not a license to fritter away a whole day.  My diary is an exercise in self-accountability.  Did I do anything over the course of the day before to make life better for someone else?  It’s not a very high bar—but hey, it’s surprising how often such a daily goal slips my mind.  Knowing that I’m going to give a reckoning of each day--the very next morning, I tend to live a little more purposefully.  

My not-so-noble reason for keeping a diary is to assist my memory.  Writing helps my recall.  And since we old people are primarily valuable because of our memories, I’ll take all the help I can get.    While I do occasionally express my frustrations and discouragement in the diary, I’m more likely to record particular blessings that come my way. Fortunately, I can still remember vivid details from the day before—as I sit to write each morning.  By the second day, however, those precise details that make life so rich are fading fast. I try to write every day.

Certain occasions, however, require no notes for me to remember.  Such as January 12-13, 1982.  Each year, at 5:15 p.m. on January 13, I call my firstborn child and wish her Happy Birthday.  I’m not only fussy about the day, but about the hour and minute as well.  And so it was that I talked to Mindy yesterday.  Jie thought it was interesting that a father would have such vivid memories of his child’s birth.  She said, “I know that every mother has vivid memories of giving birth, but I never gave much thought as to how fathers experience such moments.”  When Jie gave birth to Scarlette, in China, in 1991, fathers were not so much a part of the birthing-picture.  

Mindy’s birth was a two-day affair.  Sharon (her mother) woke up feeling contractions on Monday, January 12.  A snow blizzard had already started by 6 a.m. that morning, and so we panicked and got to the hospital right away (Carbondale, Illinois.)  The kid was already a week overdue. 

Mom was focused on the early contractions.  I, on the other hand, was multi-tasking.  There was a funeral scheduled for 10 a.m. that morning, and I wasn’t sure how to get out of doing it.  I started calling around to see if any other local pastors were free to sub for me.  But no one was answering the phone.  The funeral was to be in the funeral home, but the burial was 20 miles away.  The blizzard was getting stronger and stronger.

I had thrown a shirt, tie, and black suit in a bag, just in case I couldn’t find another pastor.  When we got to the hospital, there was no dilation yet.  Normally, the doctor would have sent us back home.  But due to the snowstorm, he let us stay.  It was decided that I could leave long enough to race to the funeral home and back, but probably should find someone else to do the rites at the cemetery.  And so, I put on my funeral suit, right there in the birthing room, ran down to the hospital loading dock, and jumped in the hearse that was waiting there to whisk me away to the funeral home.  After the funeral, the hearse rushed me back to the hospital, I jumped out, and got to the OB ward as fast as I could.  I was the first person a hearse ever brought back to the hospital loading dock.  A nervous lay leader from my church took my “clergy-book” and substituted for me at cemetery ritual.

From 10:30 on Monday morning until 5 p.m. on Tuesday, the details of our lives didn’t vary.  Not dilated enough.  Pain and contractions.  Snowfall and high winds outside.  Repeat, repeat, repeat.  I threw my overcoat on the linoleum floor next to Sharon's bed and slept there on Monday night.  Sort of.  

It was almost evening on January 13—36 hours after we had arrived at the hospital—when the hour finally drew nigh.  We had been expelled from the birthing room—and now things were taking place in the operating room.  No C-section, but there would be clamps.  I think you can still see the clamp marks near Mindy’s temple.  It was the low point of my life—watching our child’s head be pulled out with clamps. I thought the doctor had killed the baby—and the mother–and went numb for several moments.

And then the yelling started.  What an angry baby!  I’d never heard a more joyful sound.  

A few moments later, they placed her in my arms.  Her eyes were wide open, and we stared into each other’s eyes—both of us confused, neither of us knowing what was to happen next.  Except—I knew I was going to keep her, and fight and yell along with her—for as many years as she needed me. 

As Jie was wondering how a father feels at birth, I started remembering:  I did not carry this life inside my own body.  But I instantly experienced an attachment and love I had not known before.  More powerful than any feeling than I’d ever had.

As Mindy continued to stare at me in those first moments, skeptical and curious, I started to become myself again.  Which means—I started talking.  Having just watched the doctor nearly pull her head off, and having just watched the nurses poke and pinch her, I told her that it was alright with me for her to say anything she wanted to them.  I’d be on her side.  Fathers need to be practical with their kids—right from the beginning.

There were then Polaroid pictures to take, dimes to fish out of my pocket so I could notify the grandparents on the hospital pay phone, and assurances from the nurses that mom and baby would be able to settle down for a much deserved rest.

And then I left the hospital—this time NOT in a hearse.  My car was covered with 22 inches of snow.  When I brushed it all off, there was a parking ticket underneath.  I drove home through plowed streets, and opened the garage door, where I had left our dog, Opie.  He was fine, even though he had gotten perturbed at my absence and torn apart a bean-bag chair I had set out there to keep him comfortable.  It turns out that bean-bag chairs are not actually filled with beans.  This one was stuffed with tiny Styrofoam pellets—many of which blew out the garage door when I opened it.  It is impossible to catch a tiny Styrofoam pellet, and there remain some of those little angels floating around the atmosphere to this day, still announcing Mindy’s birth.

After a shower and change of clothes, I grabbed the Polaroid pictures and headed out to the Western Sizzlin’ for my supper.  I didn’t know a soul in the restaurant, but everyone there got a chance to see the pictures of the new baby and congratulate the father.

Even though I didn’t keep a diary back then, I still have no trouble remembering that day’s details.  And every year, at 5:15 p.m. on January 13, I call Mindy and recite them over again. She was on her way out to a party yesterday afternoon when I called.  So I didn’t delay her.  But tonight, when we take her out to supper, she’s going to have to hear them all over while we wait for our salads to arrive.