It was on this date in August 1947, six days after my birth, that my mother wrote to my dad’s parents in California. She was, at the time, still hospitalized.

I found the letter, carefully folded in its original envelope, among my dad’s papers back in 2010 just before he died.

Here’s an excerpt from the letter:

Our little boy is almost a week old but neither of us has seen him. I don’t know whether John has written you yet, but will give you the details just for the record. The baby was premature–barely seven months–and weighed 4# 8-1/2 oz. The doctors are very optimistic. The weight was good, that is, he was close to the weight of a good many full term but undersized infants. But, as the pediatrician says, they “had a little difficulty getting him working.”

The left lobe of his lung collapsed and he stopped breathing. But Dr. Simpson, one of those in attendance is a premature expert and lost no time in sucking out the mucus causing the trouble and in one minute he was wailing his head off….

We haven’t named him yet because he is not really out of danger and if anything should happen, I would feel better if he would just be an anonymous being rather than a definite person with a name.

I heard my parents tell this story over the years, but seeing the original letter was somehow more tangible. To be honest, it kind of took my breath away for a moment.