Well, hmmmmm

So yes.  I’m about to turn 50.  It’s just a number.  Really, it is.  May 1st started the count down.  I wonder how my mom felt the day she turned 50.  Her birthday was the day before mine.  May 31st.  I remember her 50th birthday.  It was the day before I turned 8.  Isn’t it weird how certain birthdays just stick in your memory?

I remember having a joint birthday party.  She had and did everything that I wanted to do.  I remember her making the family eat at the restaurant that I wanted to go to.  I remember wearing a white polyester sundress with a brown pattern on the front.  It was so comfortable.  I remember loving that dress.  I don’t ever remember wearing it again.  I remember it raining so very hard just as we were getting ready to load the whole dysfunctional family into the car to go eat.  I remember them telling me we had to wait, the weather was too bad.  I remember going to the living room and pouting, crying.  I remember the other family members saying “she is acting like such a baby, we shouldn’t go.”  I remember her saying “as soon as it clears up, we are going!”  I remember someone asking her if she was disappointed to be spending her 50th birthday entertaining a pouting child.  I remember her saying that her children was what made her life worth living and that she wouldn’t have it any other way.  I remember right then, at that moment, wanting to be a mom just like her.  That was my life goal.  I didn’t dream about jobs, traveling, money in the bank, what kind of car I drove.  At that moment, all I wanted to be was a mom like her!

Thanks mom.  I didn’t even come close to being the mom that you were.  Thanks for sharing your 50th birthday with me.  I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way!