A Ring that changed everything…

There are always only just a few specific moments in life that happen when you just know right then and there that nothing will ever be the same again.  The day my little sister was born, 33 years ago now, and a Ring of a telephone was most certainly one of those specific eventful moments for me.  I do remember a lot from those months over that summer when my mother was pregnant which led up to the birth of my sister, but that day I seem to remember the most about. 

I don’t suppose I was at school that day because I remember spending most of it at my grandparents house waiting with them while both my mother and father were at the hospital.  My grandfather and I played a lot of board games when I was a kid, especially Monopoly, and on this day it was no different.  I remember us playing several rounds that day and by the time the phone Rang, I was losing the current round quite badly.  Grandpa had just put hotels on Park Place and Boardwalk and now devastatingly owned the entire corner with his hotels he already had on Mediterranean and Baltic Avenue.  My chances of ever going past Go and collecting my $200 and not giving it to him were slim now.  It was only a matter of time before I was crushed, and I knew it.  The reserves of cash I had remaining wouldn’t last long and there was little chance of turning that around now and by the grin on my grandfathers face, we both seemed to know it.  However, his mind might not have been as intense on the game as mine and that smile might not have been directly related to my change in fortune;  or maybe it was and for ways I could not yet have imagined.  The Ring of that phone seemed to signal and change everything because my grandmother said, “it’s time to go now” and nobody seemed interested in the fact we were right in the middle of our game and I had to figure out how I was going to get out of the pickle I was in. 

The hospital was only around the block from my Grandparents house so it didn’t take us very long to get there.  I remember holding my Grandfathers hand as we walked through the hallways and up to this little glass window in a wall where we stopped.  There were a bunch of new born babies all in little cribs behind that glass window and he pointed to one of them and told me that was my new baby sister.  She was bigger than most of the others, 10 pounds and something I think they said.  As I looked her over I noticed she had a tag around her leg like all the others which must have been their ID tags, but to an 8 year old it looked just like a price tag.  I then asked,

“was she expensive?”

– “no” they said. 

“Can we return her if she doesn’t work out?” 

-- “no” they said. 

That confused me because of course you could return something to the store if you didn’t like it and especially if it wasn’t something that was too expensive.  I didn’t like this stores return policy at all.

I don’t recall going back to my grandparents after that to finish our game; I seem to recall I went home with my dad because I remember the house feeling empty because for those months leading up to my sisters birth there was so much activity and now everything felt different.  It was.

I’m sure I would have invoked that return policy had there been one many times over the years, but all in all it’s probably best there wasn’t one.  She turned out pretty ok and I do Love her.  Happy Birthday little sister.