Personal History - Birth Date (Or, How to Make an Entrance)

When and where was I born?

The easy answer is  - in early March, Mercy Hospital in Miami, Dade County, Florida.

But that's no kind of answer for a blog...so here's the mythic answer...

My parents had a little boy already, and their quiet little lives were forever about to be changed.

First, there was the eclipse...

If any of you remember your literary history, you might remember the story of Samuel Clemens (AKA Mark Twain). When he was born, Halley's Comet happened to pass by the earth on the same day. He would ever after say that he rode in on the comet, and he would ride out on it, which he did. The day Halley's Comet returned to the earth, 75 years later, Mark Twain died.

The day before I presented as human, the heavens expressed their loss and sorrow with a solar eclipse in Florida.

My mother saved the newspaper from my birth-day, and the story's in the paper. So there ya go - I rode in on the eclipse, and by gum, I'll ride out on one.

The nice thing is, I have lots of eclipses to choose from. Poor Mark Twain only had the one comet, but I've got tons of eclipses between now and then. So, somewhere around age 100, I'll pick one and go home on it.

Natural childbirth

Back in those enlightened days of the late 60s and early 70s, women gave birth to their babies while totally unconscious - which my brother was. My mom missed the whole thing, and vowed for something different the second time.


When she discovered Lamaze, she converted, and breathed me out instead at my birth, as well as the rest of my brothers and sister, for the most part. To her credit, she breathed out a total of seven babies, which is a lot.

Beautiful baby (switched at birth)

Rumor has it that I won an unofficial 'beautiful baby' contest the hospital staff ran that day.

Another story my mother told was about how, when it was time for the baby to be brought in for feeding, the nurses brought her the wrong baby, but she felt so tired from labor that she didn't immediately notice.

I didn't notice either - must have wore us both out. But here I was! Ready to take on...well, maybe not the world, but whatever fingers were handy, for sure! :-)