They Say it's Your Birthday

Today I turn 39 years old. Wow.

I don't really freak out about birthdays. They just sorta....are. (This may change next year when I turn 40, I don't know.) But I can hardly believe I'm 39. I still feel like I'm in my 20's. Time sure creeps up on you, doesn't it?

Someone asked me what was the earliest birthday I can remember. I didn't really have an answer for them. I don't really remember specific birthdays growing up. I'm not sure why. Do you? I have early fleeting memories of childhood, but not really memories of birthdays. But then, as I got to thinking, I started remembering my 8th birthday.

Isn't it funny how memories come flooding back sometimes? You start remembering one thing, and that leads to another and another...

It was 1977, and we were living in Seattle.

First, a little background...I spent basically my whole childhood in a very small town in Alaska. (I mean really small - like 3000 people.) First grade through my junior year in high school was spent in the same small school district. (Although we moved my senior year - my LAST year of school. Yes, I'm still bitter about it, but that's a whole other post. I can hear my sister groaning from here...)

But anyway, in second grade, we moved to Seattle for a few months in the Spring of 1977. My mom was escaping a very abusive alcoholic husband. It was a very tumultuous confusing time. Things came to a very scary horrible head one day, and it was clear - we needed to get outta Dodge. So we did just that - we picked up one day and moved to Seattle, where my mom's parents lived. We moved from a large log home with a lot of property in Alaska, to a tiny dumpy duplex in the middle of a big city in a whole other state. It was scary and bewildering.

ANYway, back to my 8th birthday. I remember we spent it at my grandparent's house in downtown Seattle. I had never really met my grandparents before we moved to Seattle, so I was still getting to know them.

There are several specific things I remember about that day:

• My birthday was on Easter Sunday that year. (This is the only time in my life that my birthday has ever fallen on Easter. FYI: It happens again in the year 2039... when I turn 70.)


• My Grandma served Twinkies, and she served them unwrapped and on plates. (I found this extremely bizarre.)


• I got a ceramic pig piggy bank for my birthday. (Which broke on the move back to Alaska a few weeks later.)


• I also got a Winnie-the-Pooh battery-operated radio from my Aunt Linda. (This was my prize possession for many years afterwards. When President Reagan was shot a few years later? I listened to the news unfold from this radio. I was at school, at recess, all by myself listening with my smuggled radio.)


• I remember missing my older brother (He still lived in Alaska with the abusive soon-to-be ex-husband. That's another long story.)


• I also remember missing my Dad terribly. He also still lived in Alaska. (By the way, he was not the abusive husband we were running from.) 31 years later, I STILL miss my Dad terribly. For different reasons. :(


• My Grandpa ate his Easter ham with mustard. (I thought it was weird then, but now? I also eat my ham this way.) :)


• We ate Easter dinner early. Like 2:00 pm. (Why? I still don't get this. Why do people eat holiday dinners super early? I don't know. Or maybe not everyone does that?)


• We took a walk after dinner - me, my sister Carol, my mom, my Aunt Linda, and my Aunt's two huge German shepherds, Buck and Nicky. My mom started crying during the walk. This confused me, because it was my birthday. Isn't everybody happy on birthdays? Now I know she must have been crying about the whole sad situation our lives had become.

That's it...my little trip down memory lane. I wish I could go back and tell my 8-year-old self that everything will be ok. I was such a worrier then. Who am I kidding? I'm still a worrier. But I've been working on that...

It makes me wonder what my son (who is also turning 8 in a couple of weeks) will remember when he looks back. I hope and pray my kids have better memories than I do. Not that all my memories are bad. Some are pretty great. But there are enough bad ones smattered in there. I guess everyone has those, huh?

Anyway, my life is so much better now at age 39. In fact, life is dang good. I am truly blessed. And I am so very thankful.