The Alice Hodge Safe Home was the last house on his plow list. He promised Rebecca he would check on her. When he finished plowing, he texted Rebecca twice. No answer. The lights were on in the kitchen so he glanced inside. To his horror, he saw Rebecca on all fours on the kitchen floor.

“I’m coming!” he shouted, fumbling for the big blue-collar key ring on his belt. When he got inside, he asked, “Are you doing exercises?”

“Exercises? I’m trying to get my phone out from under the cabinet so I can call an ambulance.”

“You don’t need an ambulance. I’m here.”

“Great. What a relief. Can you help me up?”

Stefan lifted Rebecca to a standing position.

Within minutes, he had her in the truck.

“The pains are just minutes apart,” the nurse told us. “Are you her family?” She nodded to Stefan. “Dad?”

“Yep,” he said. We looked away, so as not to laugh and then were whisked into gowns and caps.

In the labor suite, another nurse was telling red-faced Rebecca, “Okay, my dear. We’re going to have a birthday. What’s his name going to be?”

Becky said, “Jesus.” The nurse didn’t laugh. “Not really! Patrick.” She gathered herself again, her yell guttural and sustained. The nurse whisked a pile of bedding under Becky’s rear.

“Okay, Becky, I’m right here,” I said. “Squeeze my hand as hard as you can.”

She did, and in minutes, literally no more than four minutes, there he was.

“What a pretty baby,” the nurse told Becky, as she cradled him close.

“It’s you and me, fella,” Becky said to her son. He was beautiful, rosy and big with masses of dark hair. We each took turns holding him, Stefan in the stereotypical stiff comic panic, as if Becky had handed him a bundle of burning rags.

Weakly, Stefan said, “I’ll always be grateful for those tires.”

I told Becky that I would be back to give her a ride home in the morning and that I would bring a change of clothes.

“But wait,” she said. “Wouldn’t you two like to be Patrick’s godparents?”

“We’re Greek Orthodox,” I told her. “Wouldn’t we have to be whatever...you are?”

“I’m not anything. I was Catholic as a child. Patrick can be Greek Orthodox. I think that would be colorful. And I have this great baptismal gown I shouldn’t let go to waste. Do you know a priest who’d baptize him? It’s all superstition anyhow. We just need all the luck we can get.”

“Mom, please don’t say true thing that,” Stefan warned me. “It’s becoming a tic.”

“True thing that,” I said.