Another Birthday

The passing of another year snuck up on me a few days ago. Life’s been complicated but in the middle of the mess, I turn a year older today. I think I'll stay here a little while longer.

Twenty-six years ago, my mother pressed me to her breasts for the first time. She told me she cried when she first saw me and didn’t want to let me go when the nurse said it was time.

“I didn’t expect you to lunge for me the next time they brought you in.” She said with a smile. “You had a passion for life and insatiable appetite from the beginning.”

She told me that the same hesitancy to let go repeated itself at ever transition time.

“Your first day at pre-school was a tough one. I smiled but as soon as that classroom door closed, I cried,” she said.

On my first day in high school, she walked me to the car and saw the fear in my face. She held me tight before dabbing at my tears with a tissue. She said, “Go live your life. It’s going to be great!”

On the first night she realized I was in my bedroom with a boy, she said it felt like something breaking inside of her. “I don’t know why it startled me," she said. "I knew it was time. I was the same age my first time.” She stood in the hallway listening to the muffled sounds of our lovemaking and cried softly. I found where she’d written the date in her diary. It was the evening of Thursday, April 4, 2013.

When I went to college and almost immediately fell in love with a young professor, mother worried that I was putting his career in jeopardy. In hindsight, I was but we were careful, and things worked out alright in the end. Still, mother always let me go.

I wish Mother could be here for my 26th birthday.