Stranger than Fiction 
The Mysterious Case of the Birthday Stabbing
As today is my birthday, I escaped to my happy place for the views, the exercise and, in a strange turn of events, a near-fatality.
Let me set the scene…
Not far from the family cottage is a twisty series of ATV trails. There’s little I love more than clomping along them with the dogs. (Except when those annoying dune buggies show up, that is. Honestly, they’re as annoying as buzzing jetskis, but of course, their riders did carve out these trails, so… never mind. I am just crabby after the stabbing incident.)
The trails are strewn with rocks great and small, including plenty of fascinating fossils (aside from myself). They go up, down and all around the old lakebed with a cliff or two thrown in for dramatic effect. After a few nasty spills over the years, I now use hiking poles, which has improved my enjoyment considerably. The dogs run free and I can usually manage to keep an eye on them and the treacherous footing.
Today’s excursion was all a birthday hike should be. No bears. No wasps. No wipeouts.
As I left the trail, I prepared to hook up the dogs by shoving the hiking poles under one arm. But somehow, a pole slipped out, flipped, and stood upright on its hand grip just as I bent over Mabel. The spiky business end smacked me right between the chesticles. The middle part of my bra took the brunt of it. In fact, if I’d bent any faster or the point struck a little higher or lower… well, I may have become a ghostwriter again, only for real this time.
The impact collapsed the pole and took the wind out of my birthday sails for a short time, but luckily there’s nothing but a nice round bruise to show for the misadventure.
I’ll leave you with the tale of my arrival on this earth, some details of which have been only recently unleashed from Mom’s deep archive.
So… once upon a time, on a Labor Day weekend evening long ago, my mom took the theme to heart and actually went into labour a few weeks early. She did it quietly, like she does everything. Didn’t mention it to my dad or her own mother, who was spending the night.
Mom waited till grandma went to bed before sharing the big news with Dad, gathering her things, and leaving for the hospital. Did she at least leave a note before sneaking out to have a baby? That detail eludes her now.
She does remember arriving at the hospital—the one where she worked as a nurse—at an awkward time. The nursing shift change. So she wouldn't go inside right away. Didn't want to be a bother to her colleagues.
My dad was not on board with being parked out front. “I couldn't get her leave the darn car,” he told me many times. “You know your mother. She doesn't do anything till she's good and ready.”
Eventually, however, she went inside and got the job done on her own terms. She can't recall the exact time of the auspicious event. “Sometime before your grandmother got up. I told your dad not to wake her.”
Grandma hightailed it out of there before I arrived home a few days later. Maybe she wasn’t a baby person, having delivered five over seven years on a farm during the Great Depression. Mom has yet to dig that story out of the archives.
Isn’t it great—on another Labour Day weekend long afterwards—that Mom is still around to reminisce about my arrival?
But let me tell you… she still doesn't do anything till she's good and ready.