RETIREMENT MEMOIRS: JAN 14TH. SHE IS 50 TODAY

Monday, January 14, 2019

JAN 14TH. SHE IS 50 TODAY

She will need to forgive me for doing this. No, I’ll need her forgiveness. She doesn’t care for attention, doesn’t need it, not from me, but how else can I celebrate the experience she gave me to be a dad, her dad, and she was my first child, my parents’ first grandchild.

Why shouldn’t I be reflective today. She is 50 today. I mean she is 50 years of age as of today, and I mean my girl, my daughter. Carinne May Unruh she was named the day that she arrived. “Carinne,' because Christine and I had played with names and sounds and enjoyed this one. We anticipated that we and others would eventually call her Cari. “May”was Christine’s mother’s name, and Christine herself was Christine Frances May Langlois. It honoured Grandma Langlois that Carinne would carry her name as well.

Cari arrived after hours of Christine’s personal birthing agonies that I as a husband could not share. I mean prospective dads were not allowed to be with their wives in those years. This was Mississauga General Hospital, fairly new and one would think modern, but traditional policies carried on. I could pop in briefly to feebly commiserate with Christine from time to time, that was it. No dads in the delivery room. So I waited with other men for word that our babies had been born. It seemed that one by one, doctors arrived with a baby to show a dad. From a distance I could see babies with black hair, brown hair, auburn hair and skin tones, black, brown, and tan. Then one by one the men left the waiting room and I remained. Christine was having a very difficult time. At last our doctor was at the door with a bundled baby in his hands to show me. He was smiling. I jumped up and came close to this small pinkish girl’s face, tiny nose and mouth with a head full of one inch high fuzzy white spiked hair. My heart said, “Of course, she is ours, look at her ... oh she’s beautiful.” And looking back at me from that lovely small face were these soft, blue eyes.” Blue eyes !! Christine has the most entrancing dark brown eyes. My eyes are hazel brown. But my mom had blue eyes, and my brother Murray, the child my mom loved most. Christine’s family enjoyed blue eyes.

A day later, my mom and dad arrived at the hospital. By this time Carinne was one of the many babies bundled in small cribs in a show room behind a large curtain. At show time, the curtain was pulled back and as a family arrived and came to the window, a nurse would wheel the related baby to the window for viewing as long as the family liked. Some babies were crying and some never stopped. Among all the bundles one was clearly distinguishable as the ‘Unruh’ baby, because only from her blanket did the soft spiky white hair protrude. She didn’t cry. My dad went to the window, and I accompanied him. Cari was brought to the window, and I remember my father’s face and his eyes filled with admiration and delight. His own life had brought him to this point, from childhood in a prairie town, to marriage, to the RCAF during WWII, and to fatherhood and hard work in a factory, and now to a moment when as a new grandfather, he was gazing at a wonder. And blues eyes stared back at him.