About Birthdays....
March 13 has come and
gone....and I celebrated another important birthday. I feel lucky to
have made it this far. After all, I have not always taken the best
care of myself and have had a few medical scares and injuries. I
drink Diet Coke, sometimes Pepsi, have eaten my fair share of
chocolate, white bread and french fries. I have run with scissors and
stayed in the sun too long, when it was fashionable to be as tanned
as leather, with the tiniest of bikinis, thus exposing
as much skin as you could.... I have looked directly into the sun without sunglasses,
ignored sleeping and stayed up for entire nights.
However, perhaps I have been
able to balance the good and the bad by having never drunk wine,
champagne, beer, liquor or coffee, never smoked cigarettes, or played around with
drugs.... I never skipped school, although I should have tried it, a least once, just to experience the thrill. I hope that the good I tried to do will earn me a few points in
heaven!.
Often times I pray and ask God to
hold on to what is supposed to come to me, until all my children are
settled, hopefully married, with jobs to sustain them and their
families. Then, God...hit me with what YOU think I deserve! And if I
can live longer than that....PRAISE THE LORD, it will be a gift!
When I was little, I remember
the anticipation of the birthday parties and, each year, a new dress.
Mother used to make me a white cake, with delicious white frosting
and fresh strawberries.....Oh yum....it tasted so good!
Sometimes friends
would come and celebrate...it was at one of those parties that I
received the little wicker basket that started this blog (January,
first posting)
Smells, colors, music can bring back
memories of birthdays past, and I am transported into times of so
long ago. I find the accuracy of those memories amazing! The older I
get, the more accurate the memories. I marvel at the life lived by my Mother, who will turn 90 this year....how much has she seen, how much has she experienced...the history she has lived.... the advances, trials, tribulations....the birth of her children, the wars...
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| Mother at age 3 |
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| Mother in February 2012 |
And how did I go from this:
...to this... in the blink of an eye!
And in that "blink" I started school...
graduated from school...
taught school...
Learned to ride a tricycle...
..and a bicycle...
Flew in a Catalina with Dad....
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| Maria and Dad at 1,500 ft.... |
...and with Mom...
And as I grew up, the celebrations
changed. As I became older, Dad would usually buy me jewelery
instead of dolls and toys, and Mom continued to make me that
delicious white cake with fresh strawberries....
Grandma Emilia always gave me something
special, like a fancy party shawl, a powder puff, a purse, an
embroidered hankie or a wallet. And as I turned 16, and entered the dating scene, Dad did not want
to take any chances with me “finding someone” that he did not
approve of, so the parties stopped... no boys allowed....
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| Maria at 16 |
What happens when we are born?
We change our family dynamics. We make someone a Mother, or a Father,
we become daughters, sons, brothers, sisters.
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| Maria with Mom and Dad |
And then, there is
life to be lived. Some of us are easy going...others are the source
of great stress. I was the later, and made my family jump through hoops.
I was a libertarian in thought, an artist at heart. And
painted...like a hippie would... and I wrote prose and poetry and
frequented the circles of poets that drank tea and coffee and wore
beanies (drove my parents crazy!)...and we snapped our fingers
instead of clapping. I won a national poetry contest in high school,
where I wrote about how it would feel to be near death...and my
poor Mother wanted to take me to a psychiatrist because, she thought, I
was going to commit suicide. I won a second National award where I
wrote about an old wall covered with moss and how much that wall had
seen in its existence... that did not impress her as much! And I was
a communist, a socialist a non-partisan, a Christian democrat..all in
the span of a few months.
As a Mother, I have treasured
little gifts that my children have made for me on my birthday. And in
later years, my grandchildren have given me priceless works of art.
As an older adult, the idea of not cooking or cleaning, and going out
to celebrate, holds a special appeal to me! We used to receive
birthday letters and cards.....now Facebook instantly lets you know
who is thinking about you...how fun it is to check your page and see
one greeting after another! It's the modern way to send birthday
wishes!
And, oh, how we change from one
day to another.... When I look into old pictures...was I ever that
small?
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| (I still have this bear) |
Was I EVER that thin, that pretty, that young?
 |
| With my younger sister |
How fast life
moves after you cross a certain threshold..I am not sure at what
point I started to feel that there is less life left ahead, than the
life I have left behind.... or at what point I realized that I am
not as young anymore....when did all those white hairs appear? When
did those wrinkles quietly settled on my face?
My neighbor often said that
“Youth is wasted on the young”...and I believe that to be true.
If I could just have the body of my youth and the brain with the
knowledge of today.... But, it is what it is...and I am thankful for
another year.
So, on this start of a new trip
around the sun, I am grateful for my blessings, my family, my
husband, my friends, real and virtual, my health. Husband and I took
a drive to the beach on my birthday. The unexpected snow of the previous night
still lingering on the ground, tree branches broken and a view ever so lovely... it
made the town have a new look. Schools were closed, and
restaurants full. We all acted surprised, as it was not supposed to
be like this. Here, on the South Coast, we are used to rain and wind,
lots of it. But the snow was a gift to me...AMaria-Kind-of-Day on my
birthday..isn't that wonderful?
Thank you all for being in my
life.
Maria
