Happy Birthday, Mom
Sitting across the table from my mother today, celebrating her 69th birthday, I remembered this picture of her, at 16, with her mother, Annie, then 41, standing next to a gardenia bush that was still blooming when I was a child.
At 16, my mother wanted to be a doctor. She became a devoted mother and homemaker.
She and my father have been married for forty-eight years, and they still hold hands.
She is a proper lady who can’t resist a whoopie cushion.
A funky dancer and a fine plumber.
A reader of Dante and People.
A lover of God, her grandchildren, and a dog almost as spoiled as mine.
A layer of parquet floors and receiver of manicures.
A matriarch and euphemistic swearer: sugar, fudge, dad-gum-it, and what in the Sam Hill is going on?
A polite but fiercely independent patient after her recent spinal surgery.
We are two complicated women, and our relationship has not always been as easy as it is today.
But I know, Mom, that since the moment you knew that I grew in your belly, you have believed in me and loved me, just because I was “Angela.”
Happy Birthday.
