THE CAVENDER DIARY

My Grandparents occasionally had cows. Black Angus to be precise and 7 of them in this instance.

On a chilly November afternoon, a few (insert cough here) decades ago, my very pregnant mother was visiting my grandmother while both of their husbands were at work.

Because the farm road they lived on was pretty secluded, a honk from a passing car always meant the same thing……The cows were out of the pasture and in the road.

SO…… my 50 year-old grandmother (with the perpetually bad back), and my young mother (with 8 months of me in her belly), not really ran..but more, gaited, after the cows in the road in a futile attempt to convince the stubborn beasts back into the pasture.

The 2 of them must have been a sad sight, because a second passing car stopped and a Good Samaritan started to help with the round-up without even asking if they needed any.

Which, of course, they did.

It was the next night that my mother’s water broke, about a month early. A day and a half, and the threat of a possible C-section later, I arrived at 4:18 A.M.

I hear a fresh version of this same story every November 18th.

When Jamie gave me this Wicked-Huge, Rockingly-Cool, old horn for my birthday,

……all I could think of was my pregnant mother on a country road in Ohio, chasing the cows. Were they the reason I arrived a little early?

Possibly

Anyhoo,

Perfect              Birthday                Gift.

Update on this post:

I found this picture in a shoe box the other day.

It’s dated April 1969, about 5 months after my birth. I’m sure there are plenty of pictures before this one; I was the first born after all. But something about my big, open mouth and my young mother’s “Edith Head” glass that I liked.

I hope you do too,