auditory/dream PBE:

My Father's Hands

It was in the late 1940's. I had four girls already and desperately wanted a boy, hoping that might secure my faltering marriage. My husband had a hard time relating to all the girls and wanted a son.

After a reasonably normal pregnancy, the final weeks were very difficult and highly stressful. I had no emotional support from my husband, as he was on a job out-of-state and home infrequently.  After a long, hard labor alone, I was very tired as the birth time neared. The doctor suggested giving me some medication for pain. I refused, saying, "I have gone this far without it. I'll make it now without it."

In the last stages of delivery, I had an experience I can only call a vision wherein I saw a curtained room. In this room was a long table full of new babies, mostly boys. As I happily reached for one of the boy babies, a man's hands, much like I remembered my deceased father's hands, came through the curtains to stay my reach. Then my father's voice said, "No, no, Bella, not that one, this one," as he placed a baby girl in my hands nearly at the moment of birth.

My father, to whom I was very close, died when I was just thirteen years old. No one else had ever called me Bella.

The baby he handed me was identical to the baby girl I delivered.

--B.T.M.

(from Coming From the Light, by Sarah Hinze)

email:  shinze@juno.com
USPS mail:  P.O. Box 31086, Mesa AZ, 85275-1086 
phone: 480/898-3009