This Week in (My) History
Fri., July 20, 04:34 PM
It was thirty-eight years ago this week. You'd think I would be more aware of a round number, but this I will tell you. 1969 was a very strange year, from the inauguration of Richard Nixon — which we all knew would never happen — to the New York Mets' winning the World Series — which no one thought could ever happen either.
Between those two events, Apollo 11 went into orbit around the moon and launched the Lunar Module, which was actually going to land on the moon. Husband and I were watching television at a neighbor's house. I was very excited; I had schoolteachers who told us that we were dreaming and that such things could never happen. Not only was it happening, we were watching it happen.
But I didn't feel well at all. My stomach was acting up, and I seemed to feel kind of bloated… Well, I was about four and a half months pregnant, for the first time. Maybe such symptoms weren't so unusual, but it certainly was putting a damper on a historical event.
I was still uncomfortable the next night, and we decided to stay home to watch. As the LM descended, my “indigestion” started to do flip-flops. My baby was moving, reacting to my own excitement! It certainly doesn't take much to change your perspective, does it? I'm still thrilled by every advance in space technology, but it's also tied into my memories of the baby's reaction.
One way to pinpoint your delivery date is to count five calendar months from the first time you feel the baby move. U.D. was born five months and three days after the LM landed. Not bad for a first time. The last “impossible” occurrence of the year was my having a baby. And the world kept turning.
