Another year had gone by in Korea. The holiday season had descended upon us once again. Winter, especially now that we were in December, was proving to be especially harsh and cold here in northern Korea. My wife and I were expecting our first child, and we were expecting a Christmas baby. That Christmas baby was going to be our major Christmas present to ourselves. Our baby would be a welcome addition to our family. Things were starting to look up for Christmas. You could even say that this Christmas was starting to jump. I’ll come back to that. My wife and I went out with the best man from my wedding and his wife to celebrate our first wedding anniversary. Since my wife was about two weeks away from her due date, the 121st Medical Evacuation Hospital required my wife to come in every couple of days for maternity checkups. Initially, I asked, “Is there something wrong?” But the hospital staff assured me that nothing was wrong. They just wanted to make sure that everything stayed on track. They asked me, “How do you get your wife back and forth to appointments?” Most of the time my wife and I had to walk to a bus stop and catch a bus from our apartment. Then, we had to walk from the gate at Yongsan to the nearest bus stop to catch another bus to get to the hospital. That was how we usually got to the hospital. But I knew that answer wouldn’t fly. I couldn’t just tell the doctors, “Oh, about that. We walked. Yeah. See, we’re tough. We walk everywhere. Did you know that we used to walk five miles in both directions uphill in blinding snow in the winter to get to school when we were kids?!? It’s true. I swear to God. I promise, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye.” Yeah. Like I said. I couldn’t just tell them that shit. Hell. Even I wouldn’t believe some horse shit like that. So, I lied. I told them that my boss usually gave us a ride to and from the appointments in his car. The truth is half of the time I never even saw my boss. I didn’t have a clue whether he even had a car. But the hospital didn’t know that. And what the hospital didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them. On December 21, 1979, the 5th Preventive Medicine Unit (PMU) held its annual Christmas party. My wife and I didn’t stay the entire time because she was feeling pretty uncomfortable. On December 23, 1979, when I took my wife to the hospital for her maternity checkup, the doctor said, “Mister Masters, it looks like your baby may be a few days late.” “What do you mean the baby will be a few days late?” I asked. “Well, these things happen. When your baby is ready to come out, she will come out. It looks like she is not ready to come out yet. There’s nothing to worry about. Everything is fine. Your wife is fine, and your baby is fine. Don’t worry. But we do want you to bring your wife back to the hospital every day until the baby is born.” “So, we don’t need to worry about anything, right? I just need to bring her back to the hospital every day?” “That’s right.” “Okay.” When we left the hospital, I told my wife, “Well, we’re going to be doing a whole lot more hoofing for a few days.” “What is hoofing?” My wife asked. “Well, hoofing means that you’re doing a whole lot of walking. You know, like when cows walk. Because cows have hooves. But you gotta hurry up and have this kid. Do you know why? Cuz the government gives us extra money for that kid. Do you understand that? First, every month the Army will give us extra money in my paycheck for our kid. Second, we will get extra money back from the government on our income tax refund this year just for having that kid. So, I don’t know what you gotta do. But you gotta kick that kid out of the damn house and let it be born this year.” “Kick the kid out of the damn house? What does that mean?” “You know. It’s just an expression. It doesn’t mean anything other than to let the kid be born. You’re not going to really kick our daughter out of our house. That’s not what that meant. Okay.” Well, the next day was Christmas Day. But there was still no sign that our baby was going to be born. After we came back from the hospital that day, my wife started to do little yoga dances in the apartment. I asked her what she was doing. She said she was trying to shake the baby loose. Okay. That sounded kinda weird to me. But you never know. That shit just might work. The day after Christmas was a repeat of Christmas day. There was still no sign of our baby. The only difference was that I got woken up by a god-awful racket in the apartment. It sounded like all hell was breaking loose. I had never yet experienced an earthquake, so I didn’t know what that sounded like. But I had heard the sound that buildings make when they are being torn down and it kinda sounded like that. Like I said, all hell was breaking loose. I had to see what was happening. When I got out into the other room, I saw my wife jumping up and down and bouncing all over the place. I asked her, “What in the hell are you doing? You might hurt yourself. And you’re making a god-awful racket.” She replied, “I’m trying to shake the baby loose like you asked.” “Do you think jumping up and down is going to make it come out?” “It might. And you said we need money.” “We do. But I don’t want you to kill yourself or the baby to get it.” A little while later in the afternoon, my wife started having mild contractions. Her wild jumping jacks had worked. It looked like Christmas was starting to jump after all. A late Christmas present was better than no Christmas present. By the morning of 27 December, my wife’s contractions were coming very close together and I had to get her to the hospital. There was just one teeny tiny little problem. Korea had gone through a major winter storm the night before, and all of the roads were under blackout conditions. That meant there were no buses and no taxis operating on the streets. How in the hell was I going to get to the hospital? I started to panic. I called my boss to tell him I couldn’t come in to work. And surprisingly, he was at work and he had a car. He volunteered to come and pick me and my wife up and take us to the hospital. I told him he needed to come as soon as possible because my wife was in labor. About three hours after we arrived at the hospital, my baby daughter was born. My wife and I celebrated our belated Christmas present, as we remembered the events of our jumping Christmas that led up to the birth of our daughter. Sometimes, jumping and killing time is not just another exercise in futility.
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