Mom’s 90th Bday – All that said…

I have written many cheerful things about my mother’s 90th birthday, but within all that, the thoughts and emotions that churn deep within me have to do with how cruel life is to take that precious little girl, that toddler I’ve seen in my Mom’s pictures, the one with the chubby little legs and the pinafore and the funny little bowl cut my grandma chose to give her, and turn her into a bent over woman in the wheelchair with all this time behind her.  How impossible it seems that life has turned her into a woman whose legs sag and whose body in no way resembles that plump little girl, that girl bursting with youth and life.  And I think about all of that. I think about how life moves, how that little girl grew a bit and became an older girl who ran and played with cousins, who learned piano and how to sing, whose laughter echoed in the summer dusk when she played with her sisters.  I think about how she dressed up in costumes carefully sewn by my grandma and starred in plays and gave piano recitals.  

She argued with her dad and ignored her mom then felt guilty and went back and repented.  She prayed and talked to God and read and dreamed and planned and flirted and danced.  Her limbs grew, her breasts grew, her eyelashes thickened, she knew how to fix her hair, and do the latest dances with the boys at the USO.

She and her sisters performed.  They even went on a radio station and did little shows around town.  They became major celebrities with their family and school and church and minor celebrities in their neighborhood.  They were discovered by boys and she wasn’t shy with her shiny blond hair, full red lips and snapping eyes.  Back then life didn’t seem like a relentless terminal illness, it was more like an exciting adventure blossoming before her.

Working her way through teacher’s college, she did a stint as the sexy cigarette girl at Jacques French Restaurant.  She also worked at IBM, kicking herself in retrospect that she never bought into the stock options program.  But mostly she studied and kept on in school because her dream was to become a teacher.

And there were so many adventures with so many dear friends.  She met interesting people, went on wild dates… BUT, she had a special line when the boys got too "fresh."

"May I kiss you?" they’d ask.

And with a serious look she’d shake her head, "Jesus was betrayed with a kiss."

Life marched on but who cared back then, that’s exactly what you WANT when you’re in the first third of your life – that’s what you expect, that’s what you plan and look forward to.  And she met Dad.

After a long correspondence during the war, he returned and asked her to marry him  Wisely, she accepted.  He may not have been the most romantic, wild and exciting guy in the world, but he would turn out to be the most perfect man for her.  He was stable, she was a little frisky.  He was a worrier, she was devil-may-care.  He was dark and dismal, she was bright and upbeat.  He absolutely adored her and she loved to be adored.  She appreciated him, admired him and even made him laugh and feel goofy sometimes.  And she had us, her kids.

But, that’s when the body begins to break down for a woman… stretch marks and sagging… the body starts to age with child birth.  Wrinkles from worry and bags under the eyes from lack of sleep, paunchy tummies from comfort foods.  Life has begun to twist that dear sweet little girl, who for awhile blossomed into a nubile young woman, into a rather used and fading flower.

Then the kids grow and begin to move away.  A woman has more time to examine what’s left then, and more time to ruminate about her deficiencies.  Now days that’s when women start running for Botox and LifeStyle lifts.  But what’s the point?  Then will you also get your neck lifted?  What about your arms?  Your butt? Your thighs?  Oh… and your breasts?  Definitely your breasts!  If you actually could afford to do all those things, you would end up looking like the top of a bongo drum anyway, so why bother?

Life is well on it’s way to ravaging you.

And the effects don’t end there… inside you feel used up and useless… the kids are gone, younger people at work are bringing in new ideas and new energy and you just don’t seem to care so much anymore.  

You nurse your beloved spouse though a long wasting illness until the strong man who protected you for so many years dies helplessly in your arms and you feel the emptiness that has been seeping into your heart finally leave a hole gaping and permanently empty. There will be winter romances, dates and dances but that space deep in your chest will be void forever.

Still, there are friends, and your relationships keep you alive.  If your lucky, healthy, and have some money, like Mom did, you can travel and still have adventures.  There will be photos of you with your “girlfriends,” fun widows, like yourself, gathered around tables laden with linen and champagne and those little things that make women happy.  There will be a sisterhood of laughter, a final hurrah before life begins to strip you even of this.

Age continues to pound on you and, as a woman, in the past you have comforted yourself with hair dye and gratitude that your genes left you with pretty good skin.  Now, you may just give in to the gray and you grow a little too weary to do much traveling anymore.  It seems the only traveling you do is to funerals.  Just as you used to go to one wedding after another, then marked time with baby showers, then supported friends through their parents’ funerals, now you watch your peers being memorialized as you sit and remember the cruise you took together, the martinis you drank, the laughs you shared.  

Painfully, your siblings are wrenched from you.  With disbelief you feel their death as if a limb has been ripped away, until just two if you are left and you secretly hope you go first because you’re afraid to be alone.

Finally you find yourself in skilled nursing care  They keep you alive for so long you are celebrating your 90th birthday, wheelchair bound, and wondering why God has chosen to keep you alive to this time.  And your only daughter is holding you like a child; she, herself, closing in on 60 and questioning her own value to the world yet not quite ready to let you go.  Both of you in a state of shock at the loss of your youth and wondering at a life that can take such beautiful little creatures as each of you have been and turn you into these vulnerable and used up beings that stare hopelessly into the camera and smile for that 90th birthday picture.