This evening, for birthday 54, I went over to my folks’ house and ate dinner with them so we could watch the Cubs play- the second game of a double header in which they would lose both games.

Later in the evening, after the baseball flop, we sat and talked a bit.

“Do you want to know how you got your name?” my mom asked.

“Well, for a while you were just called Baby, until your Aunt Sharon said you should be given a name from each grandfather. From your father’s side came your first name, William, and from my father came your name Bruce. And so you were named William Bruce. But in a short time after you were named, Aunt Lela came to visit, and she declared there were too many Billy’s in the family already, and that you needed to go by Bruce. And so, just like that, it was decided.”

My Aunt Sharon came to Albuquerque on the day I was born, and my Aunt Margaret was already in town, present and asserting herself as a helpful caretaker for mom and her kids for a few weeks as well. “She was awesome”, my mom said. “She gave you kids baths and was really helpful.”

On the night I was born, my mom remembers it rained heavily and lashed against the windows of the hospital room she was in as she waited for my birth.