Today is also Mabel's 100th birthday. Who is Mabel? She is a serious St. Louis Cardinals fan, who loves to sing, loves the Cardinals and who used to play baseball as a young woman. Just look at this happy smile (once any advertisement ends). What is not to love? Who wouldn't want to say Happy Birthday to this lady with a rowdy "Go Cards!"??? Ok, so maybe a Pirates fan or two wouldn't, but other than that, who wouldn't? She is alive and celebrating!
Next month is Bobbie's 81st birthday. We celebrated her 80th last year (again, check out the genius math skills here) with a "This is Your Life" story dinner (written by Ray's wife, I might add, and where Ray was the Waiter Extrodinaire for the evening) where we had wedding cake before dinner, visited Rigazzi's for spaghetti and meatballs, and shared warm chocolate chip cookies for dessert, because when you're 80, you deserve two desserts in one night! We'll be going to the real Rigazzi's this year to celebrate Ray's and Bobbie's birthdays together, and it will be the first time Bobbie has been on The Hill in at least 20 years. I'm excited about taking her!
I have a birthday coming up in a few days - my 52nd. And the whole reason I'm posting this one is because it came up in a work email recently, and a young lady made a point of replying "Happy early birthday!" This sharp young lady is expecting her first little one a few days before her 29th birthday, and we talked yesterday about how babies are such a great way to start people.
And all that got me thinking about celebrating birthdays - the day, the week, the month - and then, you know what?
Celebrating life. Being alive. I am alive. If you're reading this, you are alive. I can think and write and laugh and love and play with grandsons and pick apples and make pies. If you are reading this, you can think and read and hopefully laugh and smile. Having 4 healthy grandsons, who have been healthy from birth, has heightened my awareness of just what a gift life really is - each and every breath and heartbeat even. Hearing stories of little ones who spend their first weeks and months in the PICU with tubes and machines helping them stay alive, get stronger, go home makes me want to celebrate today. Happy birthday to everyone today! It may not be the anniversary of your birth in a nice round yearly number, but it could be the anniversary of your birthday by 2 days (a little one born to a different young mother at work Tuesday) or by 51 years, 11 months and 361 days. So happy! Happy!
I don't want to be too Polly Anna here. Some of you may be reading this and thinking, "yea...right... whatever." Cause you've got stuff happening that makes it hard for you to celebrate. Trust me, as a former wife of an alcoholic, as someone who has felt the mixed-up thinking and weight of depression in the past, I get it. I wouldn't want to cheapen what you're feeling by telling you to celebrate anyway from the relative comfort and self-focused platform that is a blog by nature. Nope, "wouldn't be prudent" as some would say. I will simply say, however, that you're not alone. There are others who get it - it may not feel like there are any who do, but there are. We are here. I hope that little phrase - that little sentence - gives you some hope, some small reason to smile, to celebrate in a very small way that you are alive, you are among all of us who have been granted the gift of life.
And it is a gift. A fragile gift, in fact. Which is part of what makes it so precious, such a treasure, something worth shouting "HAPPY! HAPPY! BIRTHDAY!" to anyone, any day of the year!
Oh, I almost forgot. Insert balloons and streamers here. Can't be a birthday without balloons and streamers!! Wooo...that was close!
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