I remember 21 years ago today like it was yesterday.

The air had cooled, much like it has for the last few days, but the humidity was almost non-existent. It felt more like a late September morning, and it looked like one too, the sky a deep blue as the sun rose over the lower field, which had just been cut and baled for hay. 

The sharp change in weather is probably what triggered my water to break, starting the labor of my first child.

Or maybe it was completing the tasks of the first days of school: moving things around in my classroom, putting up bulletin board decorations, finalizing plans for my coming maternity leave. I was going to take off starting on the day after the students returned. I wanted one day with the students, to tell them hello, to tell them goodbye, and to tell them that I’d be back soon.

Nature had other plans.

There were hundreds of black crows scattered on the rise of my driveway, gleaning from the remnants of the cuttings in the field, and they all rose and flew away in one great caa-ing mass as the car pulled past them on the gravel.

The hospital was an hour and a half away. I had to brace myself against a pillar outside the main entrance until the contraction had passed and I could continue my walk to the front desk. 

You have visions of what moments like these are going to be like from television, movies, novels, and magazines, but until you’ve been through it, you really don’t have a clue. It was not the drama that I had envisioned.

“Are you in labor?” the attendant asked, barely glancing up from her paperwork. I was not in the throes of debilitating pain at that moment, so I looked like my usual composed self, except for my large belly and a towel between my legs. 

Time soon compressed, and that first birthday turned into months, then into years. First days of school, weekly dance lessons, Christmas wish lists, Saturday morning breakfasts. It all blurs together as if I’ve been spinning round and round for the last 21 years and I’ve only now been able to slow down enough to realize what has happened.

And it feels just about too late.

For her 21st birthday, she is coming home from her summer internship. She wants a fish fry and a family birthday party. She has also requested pots and pans, for her senior year dorm room will have a range.

She is a sensible young woman.

What did I do on my 21st birthday?

I stayed in my apartment in Tuscaloosa with friends. On Saturday night, I drank an entire bottle of cheap, rotgut Thunderbird wine and collapsed in laughter on the bathroom floor. My friends got me to bed, but I woke up in a different place than where I laid down to sleep. 

I went to church the next day with a mouth as dry as cotton. I don’t think I’d be a mean drunk, but I’ve never got to the stone-blind, blackout stage again to test the hypothesis.

My kid is better than I ever was. I hope she knows that.

Now I know there are things that she does that she doesn’t tell me about. That is the nature of life, for our children are meant to grow and fly away, just like those crows on that morning 21 years ago.

I just hope she keeps enjoying fish fries. I hope she keeps wanting family get togethers. I hope she will be sensible.

I hope she remembers every bit of her 21st birthday. She’s got a better chance of that happening than I did.

But above all, I hope she will fly where the good Lord leads, even if it means not coming back home.

I learned long ago that He has other plans than what we intend. 

The gift of the crows on the morning of her birth wouldn’t have happened any other way, and while it might not seem like much to you, that image and that memory have meant everything to me in all the years that have come after.

So keep flying, my beautiful, kind, and intelligent Oldest Daughter.

But if you ever need a stopover, you will always have a safe haven and a fish fry waiting at home.