topic: Omen in the Middle of the Night

Michael: On TV the pregnant mom and her husband speed to the hospital in the middle of the night, breathing hard, squealing tires and testing speed limits. My experiences with the births of our children haven’t always been so dramatic. As a matter of fact, our first two babies were born after calculated inducements. They were pretty much free of drama.

Our most-recent birth, however, was different.

In the middle of the night, we rushed the boys to the neighbors’ house, hurried into the van and sped to the hospital along a winding, pot-holed road, first over an empty interstate highway and then through a forest.

Around one bend two green eyes flashed in front of our speeding vehicle and we thump-thumped over it—we had smashed a opossum. My wife gasped. I felt the weight of a bad omen. We continued on.

Check-in at the hospital went smoothly enough—it wasn’t quite an emergency. Soon, we were settled into a comfortable room where six hours later our first daughter would be born. Things were looking up.

But as we waited through the night for the baby, my mind would occasionally wander back to that opossum. It felt so eerie to have taken a life on the way to seeing one born. It threatened to ruin a memorable moment… but then I remembered how lucky this year had begun.

Just a couple of months before, my team had won the Super Bowl. Yes, this is a good year, I told myself. A very good year. No careless opossum could ever threaten that. Poor fellow.

Anne: After hitting that poor opossum I felt horrible and thought, "This is not the way to begin our daughter's life!" It made me think back to our second son's birth.

The morning I was to be induced I was moving my mother's car out of our driveway so we could get our just-purchased-for-our-expanding-family mini van out of the garage and ready for the trip to the hospital. I was more than a little distracted since I was about to give birth! Anyway, while backing up, I hit the neighbor's truck across the street!! Bad omen--it's no wonder that baby was bald practically until he was a full year old...

Hitting that opossum in the middle of the night was pretty terrible, too. We were pretty creeped out by it. Maybe our unknown family tradition is that stupid stuff happens with our cars on the way to give birth? I dont know, but our baby girl is just fine and our son's hair is thick and beautiful! Omen shmomen.