Being Borning

It all started with that birth thing

Well I know that I wasn’t around when it happened, but spring was in the air, and the bees weren’t the only ones busy pollinating life. As much as we all hate to think about it (and I try not to), we all know it happens – our parents have sex. That is the reality of the situation. To our parents it’s a magical moment about sharing love, and bodily juices. To us (now that we are older), its a thought that helps us manage our bulemia. But … it does happen.

And so it did during the month of September or October 1967. My parents remembered how to have sex. I say remembered as this was to be their third child, and it had been around 8 years since their second child.

Not being one that has experienced the rebirthing sensation, I don’t recall much about my time inside my mother (nothing oedipal about this statement). I don’t even remember June 17, 1968, when I popped into this world (shortly after midnight, and after a longish labor). The date would come to enable this to be called the Book of James, and not the “Book of Eric.” It appears that I was meant to be born on June 16, but for “some” reason (only to be discovered much later in life) I was determined not to be born until the 17th. June 17 happened also to be the anniversary of the death of my father’s best man – Eric Russell (someone). Now my parents aren’t overly superstitious, however, they did take this as an omen, and even though my name had been planned out for some time, I was to avoid being called Eric. Instead, I was named James and given the middle name of David, in honor of my mother’s father, David John McCullough.

I’d like to think the world changed for the better that day, and in many ways it did.