We reached a major milestone in the Sherman household over the weekend as my son, Connor, turned 13.
I am extremely proud of Connor, who has always been a good kid and a great student. For the past two years, he has been a member of the band at Corbin Middle School, playing in the percussion section. He has also taken up playing the electric guitar at home, and has made incredible progress with it.
Admittedly, the pre-teen stage has not always been easy. In fact, many days have been quite difficult. We all navigated our way through it, however, and now we collectively prepare to embark on a new adventure – the teenage years.
Thinking about entering this new phase of our family journey simultaneously fills me with a sense of excitement and apprehension. All we can do is what we’ve been doing, I guess, which is just to take things one day at a time and hope that we’re able to get it right more often than not.
As I consider all of the possibilities for the future, I can’t help but think back to when it all began. If you’ll indulge me this week, I’d like to recount the events that led to our son’s arrival into the world. As with most everything else in my life for the past 14 years, this newspaper also plays a role in the story.
I had been employed as an advertising sales representative here at the News Journal for just over a year when my wife and I were preparing to finally meet our firstborn. We thought that his birthday was going to be on Nov. 8, but he had other ideas. After psyching myself up to officially become a father for the first time, only to learn that I was going to have to wait just a little bit longer, my nerves were pretty much shot.
I went ahead and came into the office that afternoon, but honestly, I wasn’t in great shape to be making sales calls. I decided to head down the street to Gibson’s Music and visit with Betty Comer for a bit. She could tell I was a nervous wreck, and provided me with a much-needed safe space where I could just talk about the craziness of the past 24 hours.
On a side note, I used to really enjoy dropping in to visit with Betty, and also making regular visits to say hello and chat with Maxine VonGruenigen next door at Maggie J’s clothing store. Those two ladies were such a big part of downtown Corbin for so many years, and things will never quite feel the same without them being a part of the local business community.
Back to my story, the next day I was once again with my wife at the hospital. This time Connor did arrive, although it took much longer than expected. An emergency c-section was required, which thoroughly freaked me out. I had faith in the doctors and staff at the former Baptist Regional Medical Center, now Baptist Health Corbin, but all of this was so new to me and I just wanted my wife and child to be okay. Thankfully they were, and another day or two later we were all back home. Together, as a new family.
We ended up back in the hospital a few days later when it was determined that Connor had jaundice. He had to lay under a lamp for several hours, and we ended up spending the night in the hospital room. I remember it was a Tuesday night, because I got up the following morning to deliver newspapers. Needless to say, I hadn’t got much sleep the night before, so I was extremely relieved when we were all able to go back home together Wednesday evening.
A lot has transpired since those early days as new parents. We welcomed our second child, Olivia, into the world in 2018. I am happy to say that she and Connor have always enjoyed a great relationship, even though they can go at it pretty good from time-to-time, as all siblings will do.
In closing, I would like to once again wish Connor a happy 13th birthday. I suppose a special prayer request would also be in order, for both Connor and his parents, to help us all through these next seven years.
