The nurse insisted that I have his picture taken, with him inside it.  I was too scared to let anyone touch him, let alone stuff him a big old stocking a volunteer had made for the new mommies at the hospital. The new mommies, the relinquishing ones, the adoptive ones…

That was six years ago.

Tomorrow Sam turns six. I got the call that he had been born, at about 4:45am.  I had woken about ninety seconds after he was born, and sat straight up. He and I like to believe, I could hear his newborn cry from across the country, and into my waiting heart.

On Monday, Sam pulled that stocking off of the wall, and shoved it into his backpack. He took it to school to show his friends. I don’t know what he told them. It was nice for once- not to play twenty questions. He used to say he was born in there.

What I love is that his birth story is so everyday normal to him. He was born, after an uneventful two hour labor, and Tea his first mom, got to love on him for twenty-six hours until we (my dear friend Ronda and I) arrived three snow storms later.

Tea called him “Fatso,” and said that he was so big he was “scaring all the other babies in the nursery.” This is all part of his lore, his umbilical story. That he now says he was born in that stocking fits right in.

Honestly our becoming a family, totally eclipses Christmas for me. I covet moments with Sam-and alone-to look at the album from that trip, to relive all that sweet new mama terror and joy.