Once there was a man named Rock. He lived in the land called the United States of America. He was righteous, upright, and fair to all. He disdained and despised evil and was loved by God. He was the first son of a poor newlywed young couple, far, far away in an ancient land where civilization had begun.

He was born on a dark and cold winter night, as his mother told the story to him and others many times over, throughout his entire life. Mother said to him that winter day was extremely windy and bone-shattering cold. Many days of snowing had covered every inch of the space. Running an urgent errand, she had fallen chest-deep into a snow-covered gutter. She had pushed on with her urgent matter that couldn’t wait. By the time she had returned, she was frozen stiff. She had warmed off a bit in the small rented, room she lived with her husband and with her great-grandmother before she ventured out into the yard again to continue with her daily house-chores.

The mother told him that she could not shake off the cold from the morning fall. She was forced to cut short her chores and retrieved to their room and kept warm near the small heather under a thick and the only blanket they owned. Exhausted, she had fallen asleep by the time her husband had returned home. After she had served him the meager dinner she had prepared, she had gone outside to fetch a pot of water when she looked up and noticed the night sky was unusually crisp, clear and full of stars. The Milky Way passing over her head was shimmering with billions of stars as if a big glass dome had shattered into many different tiny sizes of shiny stars dotting the crushed-glass-like highway that ran across the darkened sky. The mother told him that she stood there looking up and followed the Milky Way until it disappeared into the far distance of the night sky. Beckoning her there in the middle of it all was a big and bright shiny star that she could not recall if she had ever noticed or had seen it there before.

The mother told him that not long after she returned and had laid down when her labor pain had begun. His father awakened and ran to fetch a taxi to take her to the nearby hospital. By the time his father returned, he had been born by a midwife who lived in the next rented room and awakened by the mother’s cry of labor pains. She had rushed over, assuring her that she was a capable midwife and there was nothing for her to worry about.

Not so long after, the cry of a baby filled the room. Joyfully, she announced that it was a boy, a precious gift, as boys were preferred over girls as was believed by some. The mother had lost her firstborn, a girl, to pneumonia for the lack of heat and proper knowledge of raising a child. She had cried and missed her precious daughter and feared for years losing her newborn son as well.

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