…my life changed forever: I became a mother, when my daughter Lane was born.

I wasn’t the kind of girl, then woman, who dreamed of having babies. I had truly figured that I could go my whole life without children. I considered the concept intellectually. But I woke up one morning and said, “We need to be a family.” And that was that. We had some mechanical issues, but on December 8, 1988, I found out I was pregnant.

We didn’t really have the internet then. Well, Al Gore did, but I didn’t, so there was no place to post a birth story and so I had to do it the old-fashioned way and just tell everyone I knew, when they called or came to visit. Again. And again. And again. This is what I told them:

I walked around Desert Samaritan hospital for what seemed like a century. All night long. Then I got an epidural. Then the nurses said I could push. Then I pushed for five hours. Then the OB on call told me that it was my fault that labor wasn’t progressing. Then the shift changed and the new LDR nurse (who happened to have taught our birthing class and liked us) showed up and found me kneeling on the bed threatening the OB and intervened and they got out forceps and vacuums and turned and pulled and hauled a nine pound baby out of me. Then I found out that I’d been pushing for five hours because the nurses had me push before I was fully effaced and they were really sorry I’d broken my tailbone.

All the while, my first husband was running around the LDR holding this baby and hollering, “It’s a baby woman!” and acting for all the world as if he’d won the Stanley Cup.

And he had, sort of. Because that baby turned out to be Lane, who is one of the people I admire most in the world, for her smarts and her personality and her creativity and her kindness and her talent and most of all her purposefulness.

True story: years ago, we were driving in the car and Lane, who was then about ten years old, asked me whom I admired most. Without thinking, I blurted out the truth to the kid who had her life together twice as well as I did at twice her age: “Oh honey; I want to be just like you when I grow up.”

True story: I think she has three jobs while she’s going to college full-time. She has a scholarship that covers most of school and keeps earning more with her scholarship and leadership. And she was such an awesome baby that she was able to sweet talk us into having her little sister, and they were both so wonderful that I wanted even more babies and now I have her little brothers.

Laner, I am so grateful that you’re in my life. You gave me the best job I’ve ever had; the only one I’ve never wanted to quit. You make me look like the best mother ever, because people keep making the mistake of thinking that I had something to do with all your awesomeness, when the truth is that your father and I still don’t know where you came from, because you’re more energetic and focused and directed and together than we ever dreamed of being.

I can’t say enough about you, so I guess I’d better quit trying and shut up.

But I love you very, very much. Happy Birthday!