Birthdays

March in my family is like Christmas all over again.  Five birthdays including mine.  My birthday is  on St. Patrick's Day and now I be 73.  A St. Patrick's Day birthday in a family with Irish antecedents, two Irish Catholic grandmothers, (as well as Scots, Welsh, and a dose of Swede).  Thank God, no green beer or leprechauns.  I hang my Irish flag up for the day each year. Somebody asked me if I'd sing an Irish song for them, I declined.  Besides most the ones I know are old IRA songs with a lot of colorful words in them about the Brits and not child proof at all.  

I was recovering from a second round of bronchitis and was not quite party-ready but I enjoyed myself anyway.  Glad to be alive after all that gurgling and coughing.  I have very cranky lungs, asthma and copd.

Three of the birthday celebrants were grandchildren turning 14, and one becoming 13, at the same time, eek!  A peculiar age.  They swing back and forth between 3 and 33 in behavior.  I love them dearly. They are all nuts.  My youngest son now has five teenaged girls 13-17 in the house.  Why does that make me smile?

I won one dollar on the lottery.  When I remember I will go in an "reinvest" it.  I won $100 once two years ago and am still playing with my winnings.  I get a ticket about once a month, or less.

I finished reading all but one of Jacqueline Winspear's Masie Dobbs books.  I love them.  I have the last one on hold at the library.

I spent some time unpacking more boxes. I found a calligraphy poster I made of a verse of Sylvia Plath's 44 years ago. I can't remember the title.  I made it right before my oldest son was born. We lost our first baby two years before and I was feeling anxious.  This next one came three weeks early but all was well.  His younger brother made up for it by coming three weeks late.

The verse goes:

"I do not will him to be exceptional.
It is the exception that interests the devil.
It is the exception that climbs the sorrowful hill
Or sits in the desert and hurts his mother's heart."

Not feeling well and having to stay home leaves me wandering around in my mind and memories. Out of nowhere came a memory of my mother baking pies in our Ballard kitchen.  She took the extra crust and rolled it out flat, buttered it, added cinnamon and sugar, sliced and baked it and we gobbled it up.  I can still smell it.  And, she was so young, baking in a skirt and sweater, hair all done up nicely.  Wonderful to remember her that way as well as when she was older.  That tiny house in Ballard was a converted chicken coop.  Post WWll housing in Seattle.  It was still standing a few years ago.