It's My Birthday

...and I'll blog if I want to.

This is the eve of my 41st birthday, and the wonder, the impossibility of any of us getting born in the first place, then thriving all these years is on my mind. And I'm thinking of milestones.

My mother had been told by three doctors that she'd never have children. Her uterus was deformed, they said. So she and my father were a year into their loveless and violent marriage when her period stopped. She was 38, and certain that menopause had come to call. Her own mother had completed menopause in her thirties, so this wasn't terribly alarming to my mother.

The doctor had surprising news. Certainly, the tests had to be wrong, my mother and her doctor agreed. Another test was ordered. And another.

After three positive results, she figured it was safe to tell my dad she was pregnant. No use in getting him excited about a baby unless she was really preggers.
He could not have been more thrilled. He loved kids. He was a kid.I would be his portal into the childhood he would have created for himself. I would be his second chance to experience that happy and innocent time.

I don't think Mom was as pleased. She, being more practical than Dad, worried about having another mouth to feed. This was 1963-64, and she couldn't work pregnant and/or married. There goes her independence. It also meant she was stuck in an abusive marriage.

So Mom was stuck with--in all, three kids including Dad. I grew into a daddy's girl, and she could only watch, an outsider, as I enjoyed the close relationship with my dad that she could never have imagined with her own drunk and violent father. Everybody was getting something from this whole 'coming into the world' thing except her. Even so, every year on my birthday, no matter where I was, no matter where she was, she'd call at exactly 10:30 a.m. to wish me a happy birthday saying, "20 years ago, or 35 years ago today, at this very moment, you came into this world..."

I've passed 39, my mom's age was when I was born. That was a weird birthday. Mom had died by then, and 10:30 a.m. had come around, but there would be no phone call. So I ran through her spiel myself. "39 years ago, blah blah blah..." She'd go through the whole bit about the awful labor, kidding me of course. There were too many things to absorb that year. Tomorrow, I'll be the same age as Mom when she had my little brother. And in a few years, I'll be as old as my dad was when I was born.

And before too long, I'll be as old as my mom was when Dad died, then as old as Dad when he died. And as hard as it is to imagine--I might make it to the age Mom was when she died.

That's too much to think about. I won't be 41 for a few more hours yet.