My Heinz Birthday

Tomorrow is my birthday; my 57th birthday to be precise.  I now have had as many birthdays as Heinz has varieties.

  I don’t know why it always comes as such a shock as each September rolls around and my age clicks up a notch.  Because my birthday falls later in the year, I’ve been thinking I’m a year older since New Years.

Crazy huh?

When I was much younger, I never gave much thought about actually “being” in my 50’s let alone racing towards 60.  I did have a notion that 40 would be a nice mature age, the “ripeness of womanhood”, I called it.  It was a nice age, but it sure didn’t stick around to enjoy for long.  Before I knew it, I was into and then out of my forties and into my fifties.

No matter what I thought my life would be, it always has been, is for the foreseeable future; good.  For that I am exceedingly grateful.

I was very fortunate to be born into a large, loving family.  Even though I was the oldest of six children, my father was deployed when I was born so when I came home from the hospital, Mom and I came home to my Grandma Gray’s house with at least six of her siblings still in residence.  My Aunt Sue was only 14 months older than I and my grandmother was two months pregnant.  This serene photo of the infant sleeping was not to be replicated in real life for a while.

After my Dad returned from Hawaii where he fought the “battle of Waikiki”, we moved into a place of our own and my younger siblings  began to arrive in rapid succession.  I wonder how my folks did it; raising such a lively brood while they themselves were so young.  When I look at my own daughter and realize that by the time Mom was her age, she had just had her sixth baby, I am in awe.

Our family was big and loud but despite the crying and shouting (from the kids, not the parents) we were still loving and caring.  We still are a bit loud when we get together, but without the crying and shouting.

Early in my adulthood I was fortunate in finding my soul mate.  There was also some crying and shouting in the beginning, but over the past thirty-two years we have built a good life for ourselves and raised two great kids.  We have an extended family that includes two incredible grandsons and their parents and friends and relatives in almost every major metropolitan area in the country where we can visit if we find the time.

Yeah, I guess I could whine about another year passing and the number attached to my name is one digit higher, but I’d much rather have a glass of wine and remember all the wonderful memories I’ve packed into these past 57 years and look forward to the many more to come.