Happy Birthday My Son

My son, his girlfriend 2011 Anna Maria Island

My sons are on an extended trip Down Under.  They plan to be away at least one, possibly two years.  This is the birthday email I sent to my youngest who turned 25 last wk.

Son, 

Every birthday, every year, takes me back to the first few years of your life.  I loved my pregnancies and took great joy knowing I was going to have children.  Believe me, once upon a time,  I could have been voted "Least likely to have children".  But you and your older brother are the blessings Dad and I were given.  

The day of your birth I was frightened, as was your father, not because there was anything wrong with you; you were quite perfect.  We just thought ourselves so lucky after the birth of your brother, I think we wondered if lightening could possibly strike twice.

It did.  His name is Fletcher.  He is you.

Twenty five is a benchmark of sorts, but it may not be the turning point of your life.  You'll probably not remember, in later years, why you expected it should be so.  I know I cannot remember my 25th birthday at all.  

You need not have your life mapped.  Twenty five is a compass.  It's pointing you in directions.  You have to choose the road on which to travel and go go go.  I think you and your brother are doing this now on your extraordinary trip to Australia and beyond.  A year or two away from home is a life changing experience.  If it seems haphazard at times, remember, life can be complicated and messy and difficult.  It can also be sweet and simple and it is God's greatest gift.

Use your talent, your brains, your personality and make things happen.  Trust iin yourself, even when you make mistakes.  A mistake is simply taking a path that didn't work out.  Take another!!!  You don't stop hiking when you come to a dead end.

I'm proud of you and the man you've become.  You're generous, kind, loving, smart, artistic and you think out of the box; not an easy thing to do.  For once in my life, I'll credit your father with that trait.

I wish you love and happiness.

Mom

Secret Invitation

My mutually shared 60th birthday began as a secret; a secret invitation sent out by my husband to a large group of our friends.

He wanted to surprise me for my birthday by taking a villa in Tuscany to share with our friends.  It's something we've always talked about and he decided somebody needed to take the bull by the horns and investigate the possibilities.

He researched the best months to go, the available properties, whether to get a staff or go "bare boat".  He put together the plan, sent it out and asked them to come, to celebrate in Italy.  It wasn't just about my birthday, there were at least 8 of us turning 60.  It was also about shared friendship.      

He planned it with 9 months lead time thinking that would be enough.  It wasn't.

Out of 20+ invitations, only one person responded she would go.  One said she'd try, the rest were either a flat no or they'd get back to him..  But they never did.  He was crushed.  He never told me.  I didn't know anything about it.

I accidentally found out in the midst of the New Orleans plans.  His trip idea sparked a smaller, shorter, more manageable excursion but it was also more cliquey and not all-inclusive.  One of the women organizing this trip let it slip to me that it was "all Scott's doing."  When I asked what she meant, the cat was out of the bag.

My husband is a thoughtful man.  He loves a surprise.  For his 40th, I surprised him by kidnapping him to Mexico, booking a beautiful hotel in Ensenada where all our friends, at least 14 of them, were waiting.  He's also had a few surprise parties over the years but  I've shunned them for myself.  A few years ago, however, I expressed the desire to really celebrate sixty.  He obviously did not forget.

He was hurt by the lack of response from our friends.  He thought there would be enough of a consensus, say four or five couples, to put it together.  Once I knew and was able to discuss with him, I empathized but told him he shouldn't have too many expectations of friends.  It's often a shifting street, a slippery slope.

It all worked out.  But wouldn't it have been magical to take that villa in the golden hills of Toscana?   We'll get there together.

You know what they say, "When God closes a door, he opens a window"

60 Is the New 40

.  

One of my favorite bloggers, injaynesworld, commented on my October 15th Women of A Certain Age post about "turning" sixty.

"60 is the new 40!" she enthused.

I don't know if that is true or not but my bones aren't buying it.  

Last October, six of my oldest friends and I flew to New Orleans to share our mutual 60th birthdays.  Some live on the West Coast, one lives in the Keys, I live in New England and we all grew up together in SoCal.

We took full suites at the luxurious Windsor Court Hotel downtown.  Here's a sample view from our rooms on the 17th flr.

We were a ten minute walk from the Quarter.

And walk we did.

  

The minute you get to NOLA, you want to hit the Quarter.  You want to find a bar or restaurant.  You want to have a local drink and some of that Cajun/Creole food you've heard about all your life.

You want to see the sights:  the grill-faced balconies, the shot gun houses, the brick buildings, flower baskets, parks with lush tropical plants.

It's a hot flower of a place is New Orleans.  If you're having hot flashes, it's even hotter.

We had four days to check it all out.                    

You can have any kind of food you like but the seafood and local cooking is the best.  It just doesn't get any fresher or more delicious than here.

The music is the greatest.  It's everywhere, street corners, cafes, the obvious jazz places like Preservation Hall, open air patio restaurants.  There are so many truly fine musicians in New Orleans.  They say it's in the water and the blood.  

                                                                                   

                                                                                             

The atmosphere on Bourbon St is just what you expect: maniacally happy.  After a couple of cocktails, so are we!  I had Sazeracs, a favorite since my first visit to the city in 1981.  One of my friends tried a Hurricane, the rest drank their usual and missed out on the fun of Mint Juleps and the like.  We were feelin' the love just the same.                                                                  

This is the famous statue of  Andrew Jackson, my mother's cousin, many times removed.  Behind him is St. Louis Cathedral in Jackson Square.  

Personally,  I like the horse's face. 

                                                                                   

Breakfast at Cafe du Monde is a must. 

Beignets and chicory cafe au lait.  Heaven.   Fresh seafood, local cooking are the best ways to experience the true flavor of the area.  Our finest meal was a seafood place called G.W. Fins.  Other choices that come highly recommended are Acme Oyster House, Arnauds, Antoine's.  We had reservations at Galatoire's but somebody changed the game plan, much to my dismay.  Lucky for me I've dined there before as well as Brennan's, where bananas foster was created.  Lunch at Mr. B's was nice.  It's owned by the Brennan family too and is a gorgeous, wood paneled, elegant place.   

Against my better judgment, we opted for a three hour bus tour of the city.  It turned out to be educational, enlightening and fun.  We learned much and saw the remains of Katrina's devastation which is still shockingly extensive; visited the Ninth Ward now under some semblance of repair thanks to Harry Connick Jr. and his Musician's Village and Brad Pitts' 

                                                                                   

New Orleans City Park 

is 1300 acres and a cab ride from downtown.  It is worth a half or full day's trip.  Had we known and had the time, we'd have returned to take in everything from the Museum of Art to the Carousel Gardens Amusement Park and Storyland.   Photos are from the Botanical Gardens within the park.

          

The obligatory cemetery tour..  While stopped here, a full-sized bus pulled up and a ton of Super Senior citizens (meaning:  older than us) got out.  My best friend, who is usually not humorous, sarcastic or wry, commented

"That's out next trip."

We weren't sure if she meant the people on the bus tour or a trip to the cemetery.

FUN FACT:   Woldenberg Riverfront Park is a beautiful scenic stretch of land along the banks of the Mississippi.  There is an aquarium, aviary, IMAX theatre, lawns and walkways with comfortable benches.  It was funded by the Great Uncle of one of our group.  She wanted us to see it and I envisioned a little park.  Wrong. It is a long stretch of walking, biking, sitting and playing parkway bordering the river. Her Great Uncle Mal has been dead many years but she remembers him fondly. Seems he scandalized the city when he married a black woman and left his millions to her, after her funded the park.  (snort!)

One of the hundreds of  small parks within the Quarter with statuary, fountains, benches and deep shade in which to "set a spell."

THIS is what I thought my friend's uncle bequeathed.

This is the first night get-together in the bar of our hotel.  They make them some "fine" cocktails and we didn't hesitate.  We partied like it was 1999...well, more like 1969.


Many things change as you age; your jowls, butt and boobs descend, your face begins to crease here and there, your hair greys and your stamina ain't what it used to be.  But a lifetime of friendship remains no matter how grumpy, drunky, barfy, and silly we may be when we're together.

If "sixty is the new forty", this is what it looks like.  Not bad.  Not bad at all.

Yer Birthday? No. Mine

Nothing gets me in the mood for anybody's birthday like this song. It's still the definitive rock 'n roll b'day song.



Of course, many of us love the song Stevie Wonder, whom I first saw at the tender age of 16 as "Little Stevie Wonder", wrote to help the movement to make Martin Luther King's birthday a national holiday. They succeeded.



After uploading these two music vids to my blog, I was getting into this whole birthday song thing and I found the following catchy, short, upbeat song by a guitarist named Jacinto Garrido.  I don't know if he's famous or not but I really like this song he posted.



Anyway, it's not my birthday today.  Mine was Tuesday.  But, it's somebody's birthday, so

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY!"

Happy Birthday To Me

This morning, twenty four years ago, was the first happiest day of my life. 

Between 8 and 8:30am, my first child, Bryan, was born.  He was a 7lb 8oz baby boy with a full head of hair, dark brown eyes and a high bilirubin count.  He was jaundiced.   I saw him briefly after delivery but he was whisked away to the nursery and placed in a special bed under blue lights designed to reduce the level of bilirubin.  I did not see him again for eight hours.

 

 I was heavily sedated having undergone a Caesarian.  My husband assisted in delivery and my best friend, a nurse practitioner,  was there for moral support.  It was an agonizing day as I waited anxiously to hold my baby for the first time.  By the time 4pm rolled around, I was becoming hysterical, worrying about what might be wrong, despite assurances from the nurses this was "routine".  

When they finally put that little boy in my arms, I knew love I'd never felt before.  Nothing takes the place of carrying a child for nine months, delivering him or her, holding them the first time.  It was magic.  It was instantaneous.  I was bonded.  

Some new mothers have to get to know their baby.  Some are afraid because they haven't any experience.  Some take to it like a duck to water.  No matter.  If you love them, it's all good.

 

Family Photos Easter 2005 
the year Bryan left for college

 

Bryan, his father & brother January 2011

 

My son is now twenty four years old, a college graduate, living in the West, beginning a new chapter in his life; trying to find a real job, pay off school loans and make his way.  He's smart, he's funny, he's unbelievably cheerful and a very fine athlete.  I didn't know what to expect the day he was born but I could not ask for more. 

 

Children's birthdays are a time for celebration...by their mothers and fathers.  So, happy birthday to me!

Of Fathers, Birthdays and Presidents

Dad (in straw hat), his sister (in front) a cousin & their Uncle

 down on the farm in Southern Illinois   ca. 1918

Yesterday would have been my father's 101st birthday. Hard to believe. He was born in 1910,  very much a turn of the century time in this country. William Howard Taft was President. Neither the telephone, the refrigerator or the zipper had been invented.  The Titanic would sink when Dad was two years old.  The U.S. was changing from a predominantly agrarian society to a manufacturing one. People who could no longer subsist on farms were moving to the cities as were immigrants making their way to the "land of opportunity". My father grew up on a farm in southern Illinois on the banks of the Ohio River. He always remembered it with great fondness and longing. They were poor but not starving. His father was an anomaly in those days:  he had a college degree in horticulture. His mother had been a milliner in the city of Chicago but his father moved her to the farm. She was, by all accounts, not happy about it.

Dad moved to Chicago to work for Florsheim Shoes in the advertising dept. He worked as a "paste up artist" which meant he cut and pasted drawings and words to sheets of paper in the form of a print ad. These were given to the newspaper to be typeset. It was 1929; he was 19 years old. He vividly recalled the stock market crash. His workspace in the Florsheim building was below street level, with those tiny grated windows looking onto the sidewalks at people's feet.  He remembered a jumper landing outside.  He watched his money carefully from then on.

Dad put himself through colleg,e taking night courses at Northwestern University. He never finished and it always bothered him. He eventually went to work in a new industry: radio. He was selling national advertising air time to big ad agencies for a company that represented radio stations across the U.S. and Canada.  The business was in its infancy and he was there.

Dad smoking (he'd quit by the 

time I was born) ca. WWII.  When

I was little, I thought he re-

sembled Frankenstein's Monster!

The United States entered the First World War, "the war to end all wars" to which it was mistakenly referred, in 1917.  Of course, the war reparations act led to a second world war.  As a result, my father enlisted in the Army Air Corps for WWII. By then, he'd moved to Los Angeles to start his own rep firm.  He walked away from the new business and beginnings of stability at the age of 31 to defend our country. It took him quite a few years to recover what he'd lost.  By then, he'd been married and it had been annulled; a fact I didn't learn til my mother died.  He kept it a secret but it explained much about him and his breaking his engagement to my mother and his melancholy.  But, that's another story.

                                                                                               

Dad and Mom were married in 1950 and together til her death in 1997.  He lived another ten years without her, on his own, in the lovely quiet area of the Central Coast of California, where they retired.

He died during a lunch of take-out Chinese, sitting with his caregiver, a lovely lady named Isabel. He had a heart attack and could not be revived.  I remember all the times we ordered Chinese take out or he'd take me to China Town in L.A..  It was his favorite food and I was happy he was enjoying it at the end.

Mother and Dad at Christmas time  circa 1967

                            

I flew to CA immediately and set to work on funeral arrangements, along with my brother, as well as the celebration I wanted to have at his home.  The turnout to Dad's service was amazing.  My brother and I thought maybe twenty five at the most.  We probably had closer to 60 and a bunch of my friends made the trip up as well.  That meant so much to me.   My brother and I gave eulogies; mine was about how crotchety Dad was but how loving and kind too.  He was a mixed bag as are most of us.  We gave him the military funeral he'd planned for and it was so moving.  He had full honors with an honor guard, the flag folding, taps and a 21 gun salute.  I'll never forget it.    

 My sons pay their last respects to PaPaw

He and my mom left my brother and I, my two sons, his two daughters and, so far, a granddaughter.  My brother and I think of him often.  We can laugh now at things that were not so funny when we were young.  I wish I could tell him that. 

                                                                          My sons, my nieces, me, my brother out on Dad's lawn 2007

ONE

After all the hoo-rah I made in this post about all the "ones" in my life this year,  I have to note today is the second of three I wish to acknowledge.   It is my husband's birthday.  All I can hear in my head is the "Chorus Line" song.  Damn!

Yesterday was our anniversary and I suppose if you discount the zero in the date, it could have been included in my obsession with the many dates that consist of "ones" this year.  But, it was notable for other reasons.

My husband is in the Florida panhandle, one of the few places in the Southeast escaping this incredible snow and ice storm.  He drove there from Jacksonville just to get out of the weather.  He has a 4 wheel drive truck and is a great driver but, nobody in their right mind wants to drive in snowy icy weather in the South!  I mean,  that's like a suicide mission.  So, he's enjoying a temperate climate on the "forgotten beaches" of western Florida while he shoots wild life and sunsets and whatnot.

That's pretty positive dontcha think?   

Letter to My Son On His Birthday

Birthday Boy:

Sorry for the email but, between the time change and everyone's crazy schedules, we hope to catch up with you some time today or early this evening to again wish you a happy birthday.

Twenty three years ago you made me the happiest person on the face of the earth.  You were the most beautiful baby ever, so little and brown.  You smiled from the get-go.  Such a happy, joyous child.  You have given us moments of stress, fear and great love.  Glad the first two are pretty much done tho'.  Growing pains are, possibly, hardest on the parents. 

I hope today is special.  I hope you do get to skydive.  I so wanted to when I was your age.  Well, a few years younger, actually.  By the time I was your age, I was planning my wedding to your father.  Can you imagine?

Wish we were all together.  But we soon will be. 

Re:  those "presents" you bought for Dad & your brother, you'd better check w/ the post office as to the legality of mailing.  They may be construed as weapons.  You might be better off using UPS or Fed Ex but I would be upfront w/ all.  You don't need some postal regs to bite you in your tiny little butt.

I love you  I love you  I love you.      Mamma              

                                                       

Happy Birthday President Obama!

Another side of the press....too cute not to post.

Birthdays & Anniversaries

My husband and I celebrated our 34th wedding anniversary yesterday. Today is his 59th birthday. When asked about the day-before-his-birthday wedding, he likes to say,

"One day I was 24 and single, the next, 25 and married."

This usually gets alot of laughs.

It is daunting, however, to realize we've been married such a long time and are now just this side of 60. I often feel as though I'm living someone else's life. We just can't be this old nor have been together so long. I mean, weren't we just in our twenties?

A favorite movie scene comes to mind in "Meet Joe Black". Anthony Hopkins plays a Rupert Murdoch-style media mogul whose new and mysterious house guest, played by Brad Pitt, is really the Angel of Death, Joe Black. The Angel of Death is on holiday but he'll soon be returning to the netherworld with Hopkins in tow. The Hopkins character is well aware of that fact. His 65th birthday party on his Long Island estate is in full swing when he takes the stage to thank his guests, ending his speech with this wonderful quote,

"I wish that all of you will be as lucky as me, to be able to wake up one day and say 'I don't need anything more'...65 years, gone in a blink."

While searching for this scene from the movie, which I never found, I came across this quote from another blog:

"This is the beginning of a new day. You have been given this day to use as you will. You can waste it or use it for good. What you DO today is important because you are exchanging a day of your life for it. When tomorrow comes, this day will be gone forever; in its place is something that you have left behind... let it be something good." - Author Unknown