Happy Birthday Michael!

Michael at three-weeks old, posing for his first passport photo in Germany.

On this day in history, you (still in utero) and I boarded a U.S. Army medical evacuation chopper for the flight to the Army hospital in Nuremberg, Germany. As previously planned, a team of Army doctors was also flying in to attend what they thought would be a difficult delivery.

The night before the flight, your father, sister and I had gone to see what sort of chopper was on the landing pad in front of the small Army clinic in Hohenfels where we lived. The next day was your estimated date of arrival, so we were especially curious. We knew that any division training at Hohenfels was responsible for providing the medical evac chopper. We also knew that a division of the Bundeswier was training there that week. As we approached the area we saw it looming on the horizon: a small German chopper with external litters! As you know, I'm terrified of heights. Riding inside a chopper would be an act of bravery on my part; but to be transported on the outside of the craft with a tarp strapped over me was unfathomable!

Sure enough, you decided to be on time. In the wee hours of the morning, your father drove me to the small clinic. As we approached the clinic, I averted my eyes. I just couldn't look at that mosquito of a chopper. Your father demanded that I look. There, waiting on the landing pad, instead of the mosquito, was a huge, new U.S. Army helicopter.

You had the good manners to not be born on the chopper, though we were not certain we were going to make Nuremberg before you decided to arrive. The pilot had already radioed to determine your place of birth, should you be born in the air.

There are certain moments in our lives together that are like freeze frames in my head. The first time I saw you is one of those moments. In the delivery room, as I was coming through a fog, I heard, "It's a boy! And what a boy!"

I struggled to focus my eyes and saw that a doctor was holding up very large child with a gloved hand under each arm pit. I laughed, "OK, you guys, where did you get that toddler? You are such jokers!" But it was you; all 9.5 pounds of you, already grown to two feet tall! And you seemed to be giving me the same scrutiny you display in your first passport photo above.

Though we dragged you all over the world and though I wish we had been better parents, you were a wise, realist of a child who turned yourself into a wonderful adult. You have always had a driving curiosity that has given you a passion for life. You have always been thoughtful, moral, ethical, truthful and intellectual in all things. And you have kept me laughing with your intellectual wit and your strange, but realistic take on the world. I am so glad you are in my life.

Happy birthday, Son!

Cindy's Bomb

This image or file is a work of a U.S. Airforce, Airman or employee, taken or made during the course of the person's official duties. As a work of the U.S. Federal Government, the image or file is in the public domain.

Happy Birthday Cindy! As a gift, here's a true story from your childhood.

We were stationed on the U S Army post in Grafenwoehr, Germany. I was pregnant with my son and my daughter, Cindy, was a precocious three-year-old. That morning, I was doing dishes at the kitchen sink, watching her from the window. I turned to put a dish away and when I looked back toward the playground, I realized I had been watching the wrong little red jacket. I was outside in a flash and saw Cindy running toward me from the nearby woods.

"Annie*," she said in her dramatic little voice, "come help me dig my bomb out of the ground."

"Is this another pretend story?," I asked. After all, she was known around post by the nickname Sarah Heartburn for all her dramatic monologues which were only loosely based on truth.

In the woods she led me to a heavily shaded area and sure enough, there was a half buried WW II bomb, of a US variety. It looked to be about a hundred pounder with a distinctive fin protruding from the dirt. Cindy's excavation tools were close by; a stick and a large rock. I gulped as I noted the fresh scratches on the bomb. I convinced her that Daddy would be the better person to dig out her bomb and we returned to our quarters (military talk for apartment.)

Out of her earshot, I telephoned her father. He sounded very disinterested and said he would have a look when he came home for lunch. When he arrived home, he insisted on eating lunch before having a look at the bomb. He ate so slowly that I wanted to shovel food into him myself. Then he insisted on second servings; more tea; dessert; brushing his teeth; on and on. Finally he agreed to go.

When we arrived in the woods, the bomb had disappeared. The earth had been smoothed over and Cindy's tools were gone. "There's no bomb here," he said in a tone of voice one uses with a pathetic person given to hallucinations.

"Where is my bomb?, Cindy demanded of him. "I want my bomb back."

After her father returned to work, Cindy and I paid a call on Pat, the wife of the ordnance officer. Pat was fuming. It seems that her husband, Jack, never came home for lunch and didn't bother to call. I didn't mention the bomb, but I realized that Jack and his team had secretly gone into the woods by the back road and removed the bomb. "So let the boys have their little secrets," I thought to myself.

The next afternoon while Cindy and I were visiting with neighbors, there was a distant explosion. The building shook, our coffee cups rattled and we were all wide eyed. But not Cindy, "They blew up my bomb," she shouted angrily and began to tell all who were present about the theft of her bomb. The Army would have few secrets with Sarah Heartburn around.

*Cindy refused to call me Mom, "because that's not your name."