Seventeen on the seventeenth

Today was Meelyn's Golden Birthday, seventeen years old on the seventeenth day of the month.

She is a much better daughter than I could ever have hoped for, especially when you consider the twenty-two hours of pain med-free labor I endured. I was going through some kind of Earth Mother phase back then, and you can be assured that two years later? When I staggered into that same hospital's front lobby to deliver Aisling? I was asking everybody I clapped eyes on for drugs.

But Meelyn, in spite of her birth during which my husband, watching television avidly, kept me apprised to the goings-on at the Waco invasion while my contractions continued PEAKING ("Damn, honey! They're driving a tank through that wall!" to which I replied, "Yeah, well? It feels like someone is driving a tank through my [edited because this is a family blog]"), has been nothing but a delight from the very beginning. She is one of the ones who gives the world hope for teenagers. Happy birthday, lovely girl!