This is my first birthday without the woman who made my birthdays possible. On this day every year she would recall the hot, humid day I was born at 3:15 a.m. at the old hospital. She said she didn't remember my actual birth because back then doctors used ether to calm patients. In other words, she was pretty much knocked out.
My father was in the adjacent park, pacing and smoking cigarettes, waiting for the news, also common for the times. She said when they showed me to her, she counted my fingers and toes and looked me over. I was long and skinny with blond hair and a ruddy face.
We went home after about five days, and my father and older brother did the wash and hung out the laundry on the clothesline for the first few weeks. When my father first showed me to his Uncle Bert and Aunt Vera, he unwrapped the wrong end of the bundle of blankets carefully, and proudly displayed my tiny feet.
In later years, we always vacationed over my birthday. Until I was five or so, we rented a cabin on Diamond Lake in Cable, Wisconsin, where we roasted hot dogs on the beach, caught fireflies, fished, swam and boated. Later, we got a camping trailer and traveled throughout the South and West, and, one year, to Washington, D.C., usually with my cousins and their families. I learned to play mumbly peg, black jack and do a back flip off the diving board.
Today, I will have coffee with a good friend, lunch with my husband, and visit Mom's grave to thank her for her gift.
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