which is more exciting? giving birth or being born?
I was born at 0600 PST on January 28, 1956. I turn sixty-five today January 28, 2021.
It seems like yesterday and several lifetimes ago that I was turning six. And sixteen. And twenty-six. And thirty-nine. And fifty. All of my breaths have been breathtaking.
The pic above is of my mom and me in January 2012. Our angel care partner Caroline took the photograph in the living room of Mom’s big red brick house on the hill. I had come back from Dubai three months earlier to live with Mom because she was in the “early stages” of Alzheimer disease and couldn’t be alone in her home anymore.
Mom was relocated to a dementia jail (aka long-term care facility / nursing home) in November 2012. I visited her there almost every day until she died on August 17, 2016. When I went to see Mom on my birthday in 2015, I reminded her it was a special day and we shared in the wonder that I had been born fifty-nine years earlier.
The joyful conversation went like this (click on the audio player to listen in):
I miss my mom, even though she mostly didn’t “get” me. She loved me in the best way she could, and in the end I was able to love her unconditionally despite everything.
And always, we are one <3
Happy birthday to Mom and me <3
© 2021 Susan Macaulay. I invite you to share my poetry and posts widely, but please do not reprint, reblog or copy and paste them in their entirety without my permission. Thank you.
