Happy Birthday Brandon

Today is Brandon’s birthday. Brandon is my oldest son and he’s eleven months three weeks older than Cody.

I despaired of getting pregnant again after Mirinda died and was told by one doctor I shouldn’t try it again, but babies are important to me. I weighed 87 pounds when I got pregnant with Brandon. Truth be known, he probably saved my life since I would often forget to eat for days at a time. Knowing I had a baby to take care of got my mind back to a functioning mode again.

He was born early, as were all my babies except Will. They induced labor as they did with all of them because I was having problems.

He weighed five pounds six ounces and was two weeks early. He was due April 1.

He had a full head of black hair and huge dark eyes with long eye lashes. We had to leave him in the hospital after they released me and it broke my heart. I was standing at the nursery window one day when he started choking and I nearly fainted. Don caught me as I was going down.

We finally got him home and I kept him with me at all times for fear something would happen to him. Many times I would just watch him while he was sleeping to make sure he was still breathing.

He never cried. The only reason I knew he was awake to feed him was because he scratched on the side of the bassinette when he woke up. I got him up and changed him and nursed him, then rocked him to sleep and he was happy.

We were remodeling a house we bought while I was pregnant with Cody and Brandon toddled around making every step we made. One day Don told me to screw in the outlets in the living room. I was about ready to domino and it was hard to get up and down, but we needed to get the house done as soon as possible so I waddled in there, to find all the outlets on the floor under the wires.

“You want me to wire the outlets in?”

“No, Julie. I already wired them, just screw them in the boxes.”

“Without them being wired?”

“Just screw them in the boxes. I already wired them.”

He finally came in the living room to see all the outlets on the floor under the wires. I heard Brandon in the hallway so we went out there and he was squatted down, unwiring one of the outlets Don had wired in. Keep in mind he was less than a year old.

We knew we had a mechanic on our hands.

Don is tougher than boot leather, but Brandon is even tougher. I’m not sure that’s a good thing because he has a tendency not to go to the doctor when he should. Thank goodness, he married a nurse.

I got a call from a friend of his one night who told me to go check on him. I showed up at his trailer at 10:00 p.m. and he wouldn’t let me in. He kept standing with his side to the door and telling me he was just watching tv. Nothing was wrong. I finally pushed my way in and was greeted with something out of a horror movie. The whole left side of his face was melted. His hair was burned off and he had skin hanging from his face.

He was working on a car in his shop and set aside the cutting torch to do some grinding. The cutting torch was leaking and one of the sparks from the grinder ignited the gas. He heard the pop and tried to turn away, but it still got the left side of his head.

I argued with him for forty-five minutes and finally had to threaten to get his dad over there to help me take him to the hospital. He reluctantly agreed and kept complaining as we sat in the hospital waiting room. I finally got past all the people with colds and runny noses to get him registered and they called him back a few minutes later to answer some more questions.

After several more minutes I huffed up to the security guard who was manning one of the windows and asked him how long it was going to take to get my son in to see a doctor. They had taken him back immediately when a nurse saw his face. He had third degree burns.

Brandon, like all my boys, has a wicked sense of humor. Getting all three of them together for dinner is like dinner and a show.

I am so thankful to have him in my life. My boys are the greatest blessings to me.

Happy birthday, sweetheart. Mother loves you.