It is a story she told often around this time of year. She had gone to church that morning, come home and fixed Sunday dinner. She didn’t feel all that great but was sure it couldn’t be labor and even if it was, it would be many, many hours before she would give birth. She knew this for a fact because her first one had taken hours if not days of excruciating pain, and this was not that. And so she did the dishes, straightened the kitchen, and dismissed the growing-ever-more-regular twinges in her belly. Until she finally agreed that they could go to the hospital just to check things out and make sure everything was okay

By 5:00 that evening she was sitting cross-legged on her bed reading the Sunday funnies, eating a snack and chatting happily and excitedly with her husband. She had just delivered her second son!  Perhaps she credited her doctor with the ease of this delivery which is why she chose the doctor’s last name as her baby’s middle name.  In any event, the delivery was perfect; the baby was perfect. Or so they told her. This all happened in 1950 – in the days when babies were whisked away to the nursery as soon as the cord was cut to be attended by “professionals” and once they were cleaned and scrubbed and dressed, then and only then, would the parents be allowed to look at them through the nursery window.

And so she hopped out of bed (she always said it this way –  “hopped out of bed”) and walked down the hall to the nursery. There was another mother standing at the window admiring all of the freshly scrubbed and swaddled babies and they stood there together recounting their recent birth stories, one contraction at a time. And then mid-sentence, one particular baby caught her eye. “Oh look!” she said to the other mother. “Look over there at that one. Isn’t that just the ugliest baby you ever saw!?! Don’t you feel sorry for his mother?!!”  It was only then that she saw the name taped to the bassinet.  “Baby Boy Abbott”.

My mother-in-law loved to tell this story about her second born son:  Paul Rowan Abbott. And then she would laugh at herself and add “And he turned out to be the cutest baby anyone ever did see!”

And so today, on his birthday (a birthday he shares with Elvis and claims is the best gift his mother ever gave him), it seems only appropriate to tell the story again. And to honor this woman who  birthed and raised the man I love to the moon and back.

She had eight children, a multitude of grandchildren, took in every stray (including me) who came along and loved them all fiercely. She loved her fur coat, her jewelry, her Denver Broncos, her red dresses, her coffee with cream  and her husband of over 60 years. She was an opinionated and outspoken woman and I loved her for it. Having grown up in abject poverty herself, she was generous to a fault. A pastor’s wife for over 20 years, she understood and appreciated my life better than most people ever could. I knew from early on that she liked me at least as much if not more than she liked her son and that I would always have an ally in her. She proved this to be true until the day she died.

She taught me to make chicken and noodles the way she did (don’t waste time rolling the noodles paper thin) and how to welcome the stranger. She taught me to celebrate or grieve with a good chocolate pie. She taught me that life is both amazingly wonderful and also filled with disappointments and heartache and that there are no guarantees. And she taught me that the only way through it is to love with abandon and pray to Jesus.

Though we disagreed about many things – the proper amount of sage to put in stuffing, the merits of sweet tea, the need to cook beef until  it looked and tasted like charcoal – the one thing we always agreed on was that that baby in the nursery window turned out pretty darn good.  And I have always thought that she had a lot to do with that.

Thank you, Judy. And Happy Birthday, Baby!