My Mom’s birthday came and went last week. For some reason, it’s no longer on the calendar on my phone. It seems my phone deletes random birthdays. I am certain it’s user error, but it’s still irritating. Mom would have been 87 on Sunday. She’s been gone for nearly 21 years. Even after all this time, I am sometimes hit with the power of a memory. It can be a song, a smell, a joke, anything really. If I hear Brother Love’s Travelling Salvation Show by Neil Diamond, I am transported back in time, to lazy Sunday mornings after mass. Mom didn’t make Sunday morning breakfast. Most of the time, we made our own. Being one of the younger ones, I would wait my turn to use the cooktop to make myself fried eggs and toast and bacon if we were lucky enough to have it. Mom made one hot dinner a day, and made sure there was enough food in the fridge for 14 people. Sunday mornings were a mass of moving people in the kitchen trying to get breakfast. I know this memory isn’t specific to Mom, but she is everywhere in it. 

Usually, Neil Diamond was on the turntable. I would wait for my turn laying on the living room floor in the sun streaming in the southern exposure windows. If I was lucky, one of the older siblings would make a huge batch of pancakes and I could partake in someone else’s cooking. If not, I just waited, soaking in the sounds of chaos and family, completely taking it for granted. That’s the thing about moments like that. They are so completely ordinary, you don’t appreciate how special they are. That song will bring me back to that snapshot in time. 

We pass an odd milestone this year. I was talking about it with Debbie, my oldest sister. This year, Debbie will become older than Mom ever was. Debbie turns 66 in September. Mom passed away right after her 66th birthday. It’s a weird thing to take note of, and yet it’s hard not to notice. We will have a sibling pass Mom’s oldest age every year for the next seven years. Then the pace slows down just a bit. It’s not like we ever had big, personalized birthday parties, so I am not sure why this milestone hit Debbie and me so hard. It feels big in some way, and it hurts my heart. 

Speaking of birthdays, another memory from my days as a Wild Weizeorick kid just came crashing through. As I mentioned, we never had big personalized birthday parties. I know some of my friends make a pretty big deal about birthdays. I can tell you with certainty, it only has to be as big a deal as you want it to be… as a parent, you set the pace. I was not traumatized by my lack of a birthday party. In our family, Mom would pick a day that she felt she wasn’t overwhelmed with other family matters (how is this even possible?) and would make a cake. If your birthday was coming up, or recently passed, you knew you were one of the birthdays being celebrated, so you made sure that you had some friends around in the backyard before dinner. I had a lot of older siblings with birthdays around mine, so I couldn’t be sure if we would sing before or after dinner, depending on my siblings’ work schedules at whatever jobs they were working at that moment (the pool, McDonalds, waitressing). In the best case scenario, Mom would call us in to sing BEFORE dinner. Any friends that happened to be lingering around were invited in too. We sang to all the siblings with birthdays around that date. With all my siblings and their friends, it was the closest thing to a party we could get. Then, everyone would get a paper thin slice of cake, friends and all. This was especially grand if it happened BEFORE dinner. Mom would bring out bags of gifts she got at garage sales and we would pick a gift out of a bag without looking at what it was. Sometimes, there were age ranges on the outside of the bag. If you were smart enough to go garage sale shopping with Mom, you could usually convince her to buy a specific birthday present. That’s how I got my first makeup mirror. But don’t go too far before your birthday, or another sibling might claim your selected gift. 

Don’t get me wrong, Mom and Dad would say happy birthday on the actual day… most of the time. I just don’t remember feeling cheated. It was part of the large family package, and I loved being a part of that group, so I accepted the rules. 

Have a great week everyone. Remember to enjoy those extraordinary ordinary moments.