Monday, May 28, 2012

326 Days - Honoring My Own Personal Red(head), White and Blue

“TODDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
And down the stairs he ran… (thump thump thump thump thump thump thump thump) “What??? Barbara, WHAT??? WHAT IS IT? WHAT????”
I looked at him through my tears while holding a towel between my legs and uttered the following sentence: “Todd… (sob)… my… my water (sob) b-b-rroke (sob),” to which my nervous, usually brilliant husband responded “Okay. Okay. Are you sure? Are you sure you’re just not peeing?” ………………………………………………(crickets)…………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. and thus began the story of Roman’s birth.
Six years ago today my beloved son was born at 4:11 in the morning after thirty-seven weeks’ gestation. My Roman had finally arrived as an eight pound, six ounce bundle of fatty chubness but with one little extra added bonus that neither of us had expected.
“Awwwww” said Nurse Tabitha as she walked him over to the sink for his bath, fresh from mommy’s uterus. “We’ve got a redhead!!”  The look on my face must have said it all (to everyone else) but I personally felt that more needed to be expressed, so I looked at my ‘baby daddy’ and added a very simple “Is she fucking serious?” to make the moment complete. Oh, she was serious. Nurse Tabitha, a redhead herself, could spot redhead brethren from three miles away, and while Roman was practically hairless other than the male pattern baldness above his ears, it was clear that those small patches were indeed of orangey-red tint. I simply could not believe what I was seeing, or the fact that I had birthed a redheaded baby boy. I had officially created an offspring of my mother’s father, Harold Henry, who had as fiery a top as anyone had ever laid eyes on. And I had never been happier or more proud once I held that little bastard in my arms for the first time. He was, and continues to be, the bright orange sun in what has been a sometimes grayishly dismal existence. Roman the Red is six today; Memorial Day. And I’m happy he is able to share this day with not only my brother, and cousins, and uncles, all of whom served proudly in this nation’s armed forces, but mostly with the redheaded great-grandfather that sadly neither he nor I ever knew in person.
Harold Henry Hoke was born in 1899. He was father to Allen, Jack, Robert, June, Arthur, Janet, Joyce, and Jay and served as a member of the United States Army in both World Wars. Eighteen Ninety-Nine… can you even imagine what that man had witnessed in his lifetime? Grandfather Hoke, according to legend, was not only a devoted military man, but also, a runner and overall athlete. According to this little snippet from a Philadelphia newspaper, Gramps, or “Red Hoke” as he was known, was one of the most outstanding athletes in the 111th infantry, and had, as a schoolboy, been the first in the entire state of Pennsylvania to run 100 yards in 10 seconds. I was blown away when I first read that article both from pride and from sadness that I had never known the grandfather that my mother was always so proud of. And I often wonder what life would have been like if I had grown up knowing any of my grandparents. It’s weird how you can miss someone without ever even meeting them, you know? And even though I know he would have had to have lived to be 107 years old by the time Roman was born, I still envision him as a fifty-year old badass serviceman with a heart of gold, bouncing his great-grandson on his lap with pride in his eyes that this boy was a carrot-top like he was. I imagine him smoking a cigarette and drinking a beer, and yet still being soft and caring like my mother always said he was. The mind can be so much fun when you allow yourself to let it be free and open enough to create stories and build images of something that can never be. We should dream a little bit more, even in the hours when we are most awake.
Today’s blog post has little to do with my getting older except for that fact that my son is getting older, which of course goes hand-in-hand. But I wanted to make a post today that would last forever, written in internet stone, because one day my great-granddaughter might be a tall, lanky grey-eyed brunette with wide shoulders and full lips who may just want to know what her great-grandma – the woman whom her mother and her grandmother tell her she looks like all the time – was like. I wanted to do something that Red Hoke never thought to do, or maybe, ever had the chance to do… paint a picture of myself for future generations to see, because I think that my Roman would have loved to stare at a beautiful painting of Harold Henry and know exactly what it was that he was thinking, or why he was smiling that silly Hoke smile.
Happy Birthday, Roman.
Happy Memorial Day, Gramps.
Your mother, and your granddaughter, loves you.

No comments:

Post a Comment