A Birthday to Remember

Each birthday brings more wonderment in my life. Usually birthday celebrations were family affairs when I was a child. One birthday was celebrated in the sandy area of Southwest Oklahoma on a windy day. Our homemade ice cream was chewy with grains of sand.

Then on my twelfth birthday, Mother decreed that I would have a party. She carefully made four sandwich spreads, found a uncut loaf of bread (1941) and sliced it lengthwise four times. She spread the fillings on each layer, and created a whole loaf again, which was then sliced normally for refreshments.

My sixteenth birthday in 1945 was memorable. That was the year I took a driver’s test (passed), was able to date AND wear Tangee Natural Lipstick (an orange tube of lipstick that turned pink when applied). Oh, and drink coffee. That was a big year.

One birthday after marriage and four children, I spent a whole year forgetting how old I was. In 1997, Mother gave me a look at her point of view when she said, “I never thought I would have a daughter who is 68 years old.”

Now eleven years later, I am headed for 80 years old. God has blessed me good health, energy, and I sometimes wonder what I will ‘have to give up’. Or will I have to give up?

At 77 years of age, Mother wrote in her journal a year of activity that included references to canning, sewing, giving piano lessons, visiting the elderly. She raised flowers so that she could take a gift when she visited. Once Mother asked her Mother, a resident of a nursing home, what it was like to be old. My Grandmother answered, “I don’t know, I will ask some of the ladies here.”

And always she remembered her dear “Poppa” and missed him so much after 50 years of marriage ….

Poppa’s Rose
Fragile and fragrant
Reaching for light
Catching each pearl drop
That falls, through the night
Lasting one moment
You gave them new worth
By calling all roses,
“The soul of the earth.”

In Mother’s Journal, she remembers, “In his last months, our sweet Poppa often thanked God for his accomplishments of the day. At times, it was getting dressed or taking a garden walk, but Poppa was thankful for everything he could do in the limited strength left to him.”