When I tell you I was praying, non-believer that I am (then and now I might add) on this night 38 years ago, it’s no joke…I was wishing and I was praying like I had never prayed or wished before, and probably never since…I wanted this baby that I was about to have to be a girl. The circumstances I was in were far from ideal, and the thought of a baby boy growing up without a dad broke my heart in a thousand pieces, so I was wishing and I was praying because 38 years ago it was not standard procedure to know anything about your baby before it was born, other than that it was of appropriate size for the date and had a good strong heartbeat. So I wished and I prayed, hard, on my way to the hospital 38 years ago, at about this hour.

I had had a doctor appointment that afternoon. I had only been an adult for two months and 9 days and at that regularly scheduled appointment, eight days before my due date, the doctor asked me, “aren’t you in any pain?” no. “are you feeling any discomfort?” no. To which he chucked and then replied, “well you should be on your way to the hospital really as you’re already half way through labor. I’ll see you there later.” …and so this 18 year old girl took a deep breath and realized that her due date was now, “now” and her wishing and her praying started in earnest.

I arrived at the hospital shortly after 6 pm and at 5:04 in the morning I heard the words come out of my sister’s mouth that I had wished and prayed for harder than anything I ever wished or prayed for in my life. ”It’s a girl.”

I decided this morning that from this birthday on she can just be “thirty something” and I won’t recollect anymore how many years ago it was that I went from just being “me” to being her mother. My life was very hard for a very long time but she would not have known it. There was more love for that little girl that came from my family to her than a person could wish or pray for in a lifetime. She never went without any thing and never, not even for a day, felt unloved.

There is nothing smart about waiting too long to find out that you are pregnant, and there is nothing smart about not telling the boy you’d had a crush on & one-night stand with that you are pregnant, and there is nothing smart about waiting until your daughter is 25 to tell her of these details, and there is nothing smart about telling this grown man, who by then was with four children of his own, that you have just told your 25 year old daughter of these things…but here we are…13 years later, and this man and his fifth child, his first really, have connected and met and talked and visited with one another, and she says things like “my dad texted me that…” and my heart just about jumps out of my chest, “my dad” something she never knew or had until she was already a grown up and a mother herself.

I am going to text this man tonight, who has forgiven me for my choices and has become my friend again, this man who is my daughter’s father, our daughter’s father, and I am going to tell him about this night, 38 years ago, and how hard I wished and how hard I prayed that this baby would be a girl, and that, looking back, I am sorry that I denied him the opportunity to know her as an infant, and a toddler, and a preschooler, and a student, and a teenager, but that he got to know her as the woman she is is really some kind of wonderful anyway…he was still in high school and had his whole life ahead of him when I had to give up mine…my less than smart decision making stopped all of my hopes and all of my dreams in one swoop…I was not about to end somebody else’s hopes and dreams…so I didn’t. My daughter will probably get a text message tomorrow from him for her birthday and it will probably end with “Love Dad” and for that I am deeply grateful that all my skeletons got out of my closet and that my daughter, his daughter, this daughter on her 38th birthday will feel some love from her dad, something that, back then, I never could have imagined would happen, no matter how hard I wished or prayed…