The Ball

On New Year’s Eve 1999, when not busy worrying about my coffee maker spontaneously combusting at the stroke of midnight or how I would deal with being hurtled back to the dark ages, I thought about the new baby riding around inside of me. I knew my baby would be a Y2K babe and wondered what that would mean for him or her. Changing diapers made out of leaves by the light of a rationed match? Would his or her newborn portrait be sketched onto the wall of a cave? Would I be washing his or her poopy-blowout onesies in Clear Creek?

Actually, I was pretty confident that our toaster would properly burn my bagel in the morning. My worries were bigger than the ridiculous speculations of the day. My Y2K baby was our third child. That was bigger, to me, than the possibility our answering machine would eat our outgoing message.

None of the doom and gloom Y2K predictions came true, of course. And none of the dire predictions I had formulated about how hard it would be to have three kids ages three (barely) and under came true, either. I found that Sam settled into our family and routine with greater ease than I dared to imagine.

I can’t imagine life without our sweet, funny, intense, whimsical Sammy-Ball. Happy Birthday to our brand-new five year old.