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I really think that I thought this day would never come. My baby is 16 years old. That's about 5,840 days. 140,160 hours. 8,409,600 minutes.

How can it be? I still remember thinking she would never even arrive. She was so late! It was hotter than blazes, even though it was October in Oregon. We had moved there when I was pregnant, and the realtor had told us we wouldn't even need air conditioning. My husband had gone on a house-hunting trip there all by himself, and he promptly informed her that we were from the Midwest and that his wife was pregnant. Surely she could understand our desire for A/C. Through her plastic smile and gleaming white teeth, the realtor persisted, claiming that it would only reach 90 degrees perhaps seven to ten days out of the whole summer.

Deciding this was good enough even for his pregnant wife, my husband signed the lease on the space we would rent while we lived in Oregon for his "temporary transfer" assignment. At the time, the temporary transfer with my husband's company seemed like a perfect solution to a "growing" problem. I had a job managing a ladies retail shop that was giving me varicose veins from all of the standing, and the pay was awful. I mean really awful. Until I became pregnant, I had been able to console myself with my outstanding store discount. However, when the clothes started to get a little snug, even this little perk began to pale in my bright eyes.

So, why not? We'd see a part of the country we had never seen. My husband would be paid for all of his overtime hours. We'd rent our house out for the year we were gone. And I could quit working the job that was making my long, lovely legs look so ugly. I'd find a job out there until the baby was born and see how it went from there.

• Never mind that we didn't know a soul in the entire state.
• Never mind that we didn't own enough plaid to live in the lumberjack community in which we settled.
• Never mind that unemployment in our county was almost 13 percent, so I would have no prayer of finding a job.
• Never mind that the summer of 1991 was the hottest summer in the history of the state - ever since they'd been tracking that sort of thing anyway. The hottest summer in the history of the state. That's quite a statement, don't you think?

The day we brought Princess in Waiting home from the hospital (October 11th), it was - are you ready for this?? - 103 degrees. I am not kidding. And we had no air conditioning. Oh my lord, it was hot.

And not to get too terribly maudlin, but the heat was not the half of our worries. My mother became gravely ill while we were away. When we left, I knew that my mother had ovarian cancer, but my whole family thought that it was under control. We truly thought that she was going to be fine. By the last trimester of my pregnancy, however, we had received the news that Mom was not responding well to the treatment and that they were running out of options. Against my doctor's advice, I flew home in August to see my parents. Mom was holding up all right but not her usual self. We still had hope at that point, but it was starting to look grim.

By late September, all of my siblings knew that Mom was not going to make it. No one wanted to upset me before the baby came, so they waited. Of course, like many first babies, ours was late. Then, later. And later still. Finally, I had to be scheduled to be induced. However, a few days prior to my scheduled induction, my dad called with the news that Mom was so sick they didn't think she was going to make it much longer. My induction had to be moved up so that we could fly home even sooner.

I was induced, our beautiful daughter was born without complication, and when our Princess in Waiting was just eight days old, we flew home to Kansas City to be with Mom before she died. That was quite a trip. Talk about a cosmopolitan little baby. Flying at such a young age. There are so many things that I don't remember about my Princess in Waiting's early days. I think that was the grief over the loss of my mother.

But I do remember this. I remember the feeling that God had given me a precious gift in return for the loss of my mother. I remember clinging to her for consolation and rocking her for hours into the night even when I knew she didn't "need" any rocking. And now, we've had this gift - this beautiful child - for 8,409,600 minutes. And what an incredible blessing she has been to us. Oh, you'll hear me whine and moan now and then about this or that, but our Princess in Waiting? She was truly a gift from God when I needed it most.