It's my Birthday!

Today is my birthday.  It's a "big one", 65.  I'm officially old.  I presented my Medicare card for the first time at the allergy doctor. Last week I tripped over a baby gate I had set up to contain our basset hound, Luke, then, on Saturday, fell over a tractor attachment while carrying my saddle.  It's not like those things were tiny and easy to miss!  Clumsiness comes with age for some people, but I've always been this way: going through life in dreamland while banging up my shins.  And my daughters are quick to remind me not to worry about dementia - "You've always been forgetful. Remember picture days?"  So, I'm happy to reach this milestone in pretty good health, with my family in good shape as well.

Last night as I was falling asleep, my thoughts turned to my mother, and how uncomfortable she must have been 65 years back.  I was dearly wanted.  It had taken my parents awhile to conceive, and their friends and family members were already parents.  Those were the days before ultrasounds and such, so they were awaiting the surprise of whether they'd welcome a boy or a girl.  My mother, along with her mother, wanted a girl mightily.  My maternal grandmother had sewn a beautiful layette that included a number of pink gowns.

Those were fine days for my parents.  My mother had quit her job mid-pregnancy, as women did in 1955.  My dad was establishing himself as an architect in their small, southern town, and had all the work he could manage.  It would be several months before he had the first heart attack that would cast such a menacing shadow over our lives.  His third, when I was 8, would take him from us and set the tone for my remaining formative years.  I was to be their only child.

It is a good and healing thing for me to try to imagine my mother before her life was upended by such trauma.  In pictures surrounding my birth, she looks happy and relaxed.  She was strikingly pretty, and very stylish in that 1950's way we now call "vintage".  She is positively beaming, wearing a big, red corsage in outdoor photos taken the day of my baptism.

She would grow bitter over the years of managing life by herself.  She never re-married. The only thing she loved in life was me, and that is a crushing load for any offspring.  It was inevitable that I would disappoint as I made decisions about what I wanted for a life.  We came to blows about my beloved, to whom I've been blissfully married for almost 40 years.  You can bring a person into the world, but you can't live his or her life. You only get to commandeer your one glorious speck of time here.

I'd like to tell her I have a great, joy-filled life.  I like to hope that, in her eternity in God's close presence, she is like that new mother:  hopeful, content, safe in her world, protected from unbearable loss forever.  Thank you, Mom, for bringing me into this amazing world.

I commend to you a beautiful hymn by John Ylvisaker called "A Borning Song".  It opens:

I was there to hear your borning cry,

I'll be there when you are old.  

I rejoiced the day you were baptized,

to see your life unfold...

Several artists have recorded it on YouTube.  Bring the kleenex.