Well, I suppose it really matters, and especially if you run out of birthdays! When I woke up on my birthday (April 2) earlier than desired, I didn't realize right away that it was my birthday. I was having a hard time falling back to sleep so I decided to think of each of the important people in my life, and try to recall a memory of a happy time with that person. It quickly turned into a fun exercise but I soon drifted off, with the sweet memories of cuddling the infant Benj and rocking him to sleep on sunny afternoons that first summer of his new life. When I awoke again it was at the sound of the ringing iphone and a call from N, and Facetime with her and Benjamin. His happy face appeared on the screen and he babbled something in a two year old voice that gets clearer everyday, and I am sure I heard him say "happy birthday, grandma." Nothing matters more than that.
Soon plans were in place for exercise, lunch with C and a visit to the Como Park Conservatory. C surprised me with the exercise/walking poles I have been wanting, and N sent a lovely vase of flowers. J encouraged me to schedule a massage. It was a fine birthday! (Let's leave out the call from the garage about the $400 car repair bill, and the clogged sewer in the basement bathroom!)
But I thought more about the the "happy exercise" that started my day and I think this merits revisiting often. We all have happy memories of special moments spent with family and friends and these are the times that matter. Like all the happy summer Fridays I spent shopping and then lunching out with my mother at the Woolsworth lunch counter, or maybe the Townhouse Restaurant on Main Street. She often let me pick out paper dolls, or maybe some new clothes. I could never understand how she would totally outfit me for Easter Sunday, and get nothing for herself, claiming she didn't really need or want anything. I realized in later years that she probably didn't have two Easter outfits in the family budget. It was during those days together that I grew to love her not only as a mother, but as a friend - a bond that lasted throughout her long life.
Or how about dad? How many of his pancakes have I eaten? And who else would even consider letting his college age daughter drive off in his brand new car to six weeks of summer school?
I wasn't close to my dad growing up, in the ways Jim was close to Nicole and Claire but our adult relationship has been very satisfying.
J - I picture him in our first year of marriage, my young husband hiding all his fear as he joked about my balding head - the grim result of several weeks of radiation treatment for cancer. I was depressed on that bright spring day and he suggested that maybe if I sat in the sun, and he watered my head, my hair would grow.
N brings a smile to my face in countless memories but none matters more than the day Benjamin was born and she turned to me and said, "mom, this is just about the best thing I have ever done."
And C once erased all the doubts I had about interracial adoption which she told me that she didn't mind so much that she didn't look like me, her sister, or her dad. "I just wish you all looked more like me." It matters enormously to me that she is happy as an adopted daughter in a family that doesn't share her ethnicity, but loves her unconditionally.
These things matter.
No comments:
Post a Comment