I hear the girls voices like it was a chant they did yesterday."Happy Birthday to you, happy birthday to you, you live in a zoo, you look like a monkey and you smell like one too" Giggles, Giggles, Giggles!!!
It was a yearly routine with all our birthdays, followed with the kisses and hugs and :are you baking a cake?
It was yesterday, was it not? This week I will be 80!!!!
The only birthday I did not like was "55", I was depressed it was cold and
I was working on an estate sale which was not going well due to ice on the road.
The combination had me upset.
55, I thought life is over, gosh what is there left for us? Bob is already 61, he is OLD, he is in his sixties.....but then the other side of the coin will be that in
a year he will have social security and Medicare....something to look forward to.
Since then I have not objected to the added birthdays.
When I reached 60, Rhonda was still a dr.'s wife and she arranged for a nice dinner in her huge house, most invited were other antique dealers I worked with every day. It was nice.
I do not like a lot of "stuff" and action for my birthday.
I always say that holidays and birthdays bring out the caring in people but I prefer to see that every day in small dosis. Don't bring me flowers when I am dead kind of a thing. I spoiled my mother in her last decades, filled her rooms with antiques and paintings. She lived in a gorgeous environment. She did not need to
be 80 to get a Val St Lambert vase.
My children take care of me every day. That is a HUGE birthday present. I need no more, I need nothing more to dust, wash or break. A plant for the garden , I said, if you must be obnoxious about this gift giving thing.
Bob got me the special poppies I wanted and they are thriving with our "hot" week.
We will have lunch at the Bistro in Biltmore, have a cheese plate and best of breads and a glass of wine. Two I allowed to be invited by the girls were
Celia and Louis. They stood by me for decades.
Two years ago, at this time, I was in a rehab learning to walk again on a broken ankle. My love had to be given over to strangers in a nursing home. I would not have bet a dime for me to still be alive by end of the year.
I was worn out, totally spent, did not give a damn about anything but Bob who I pictured in a hell hole. (He was n't) Our lives did not need to end that way I thought. I was ready to go to whatever is after this.
THIS right now for me was hell on earth. It could not get worse.....
well, I learned to walk, I was the star at the rehab, I insisted on more and more
excersizes I wanted to be home. 21 days I was there but it was a paradise compared by the rest of places. I was treated like Royalty.
My depression worsened as we watched Bob fail for the next 6 months.
By the time he left us I just thought I would never heal without him.
Then last year I continued the doctors paths, the c word in the kidney, removal of same and then a bad fall which crushed my lower back.
In my solitude I figured it was time to give up, Bob was gone 6 months and is it not the usual routine for people close to each other to join after that amount of time??
Somehow, out of the blue I have picked myself up in these last months and have decided that my life is worth to continue and not give up. I feel we have choice about a lot in our lives, if one wishes long enough to go then it will happen, I am sure of this, but if we give our life some meaning then perhaps we can still be of good cheer and love our kids and friends, the pets, the blossoms on the trees and the gorgeous white cloud I saw tonight. (Bob would have loved it, he was a cloud man).
I have survived a lot, abuse, a war, loss of babies, a bad marriage, RA, business failures at times, panic disorder etc...we all have these different challenges in life, I am just one of the whole, we have a choice, we fight for survival and
do not give up. I am just delighted, even proud, and excited that I made it till
the age of 80!!!!
Bring on the next decade!!!!
Happy Birthday, old broad, you deserve the smile wrinkles and the frown wrinkles? hell, you surely deserved them too!!!!!
At one time or another I was Jeannette, Janet (for Americans), Jeannot Van Melle, Huys, Kensinger and lived in Belgium, Montreal, New Jersey, Northern California,Nerja Spain and the gorgeous Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina.
I have been damn lucky!!!! I became an American in 1967 but still wished that I did not have to give up my Belgian identity which was the law then. Now you can have dual citizenship.
Happy Birthday!!!!!
OH I am premature, my birthday is March 15
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