When I checked the time this morning, January 14, 2025, it was 10:22 and my mind went back to January 18, 1976. It was a cold, fourteen degrees at 4 AM, morning and my firstborn son entered into the world at 10:22 AM. It was a Sunday morning full of joy, hope, and the uncertainty of the future.
Back then fathers had a room to wait for newborns. We were not allowed in the delivery room. There were several dads nervously waited for the Stork’s delivery. One by one, nurses retrieved dads to meet the arrivals. Suddenly, they called for Mr. Hopper. I jumped to my feet and entered my wife’s room where little Andy Lee Hopper lay on his mother’s stomach. He had a yellow hue. I jokingly asked her, “Where did you get the little Asian baby?”
As she hugged Andy tight and forced a smile, she said he was yellow jaundice. She said they are going to put him under some lights for treatment. Andy was so cute laying with only a pair of colored glasses for clothing. I would stand at the babies’ window and soak in the moments that seem as only yesterday. Forty-eight years later, I have collected scores of precious memories especially those of birthdays.
January 18 typically involves cold and usually snow. Snow in Alabama is rare but around the third week in January the probability increases dramatically. There was snow last Friday, the 10th and the immediate forecast for next week calls for more snow and frigid cold. Snow is God’s way of blessing us with snow on Andy’s birthday. His first snow was his first birthday. We did not keep a record, but we did a big snow on his sixteenth birthday and several in between.
One snow birthday, a neighbor, now an aunt had a Honda three-wheeler. They were outlawed later and a rare find today but fun especially in the snow. Andy had the best time laughing as he slipped and sledded in the winter wonderland. I can still see his rosy, red cheeks, laugher, and smile atop the big tired, red, motorized tricycle.
As he got older and Three-wheelers outlawed, Honda added a tire and created four-wheelers. His aunt and uncle surprised him with pulling him on a plastic kiddy swimming pool behind the four-wheeler. He looked like Santa on a sleigh.
Any lives in San Antonio, Texas now. I doubt that he will get snow there on his birthday but if we get it here it will be a time of reflection. Snow and birthdays are God’s miracles. Each snowflake and each birth are unique. Once a baby and the hope and fears of another generation, he became an artistic man. The first-born grandson of the Hopper family is followed by a sister, brother, and 49 cousins.
I remember daddy holding his first grandson at Granny Hopper’s wake. The joy he had is priceless. Momma loved Andy so much that love still radiates in our memories. If they could only witness the increase that began with Andy, they would be proud.
“As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater.” Isaiah 55:10
It began with you. Happy birthday son!
Love dad
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