13 years minus 1 day, and counting....

Asa is focusing on the future
today. One more day and 

he'll be 13 years old.... 

Here's Asa now. He's wearing the NY Giants jersey he got for his birthday. 

Asa is obsessed with pro football. There seems to be nothing he doesn't know (and doesn't passionately want to share) about last season's games and stats, the games and stats of decades past, and even personal details about players. He knows what kinds of pets his favorite players have.

My son considers the coolest thing about me to be that, as a child, I would stay all night at Dom Capers' house all the time because his little sister was my best friend. Sigh.

I, like most mothers on this 

occasion, am focusing on the past....

Thirteen years ago... right about now.... I was like an animal in its death throes. My vision and hearing were going in and out. For close to a day, it had felt as though someone were yanking viciously on my colon, trying to pull it out. 

They had given me an epidural but it didn't knock out sensation below my waist. It did, however, knock out all muscle control and when someone lifted my right leg to reposition it, they dropped it off the side of the table and I screamed. 

Granted, I may already have been screaming. Or I may have hit the extended period when I made uncanny drawn-out growling, wailing, sobbing noises. The doctors and nurses were in full white haz-mat with full white hoods, and my blood was splashed and smeared and dripping down their clear plastic facemasks. There were spatters on the ceiling.

A friend who was in the room later told me, God, it was a trainwreck in there!

Finally being born surprised him.
It took a long time for him to
lose this expression.

Then, thirteen years ago tomorrow, Asa was born. Six suction attempts and a forceps delivery. Oh, look, here's Asa now.