"Let us celebrate the occasion with wine and sweet words."
It is the 4th of May, Thursday of Peg's annual birthday week, and in this case her actual birthday.
I've pondered what to write this morning on this topic, which has been on my mind for weeks. Peg's eschewed gifts, recognizing that we both have a habit of just buying what we want so long as it's not an extreme extravagance, and also that this is the wrong time for me to buy her that Mercedes 450 roadster that's occupied her consciousness since she spotted one at the Lakewood Country Club last weekend. So I can't rely on commerce to mark the occasion.
And ruminating on how remarkably strong and smart and determined she's been over the course of her life, raising a great son and building a career in the midst of both acute and quotidian adversity, would mean telling a story that's not mine to tell.
I never knew this person, but I sure wish I had. Water under the bridge, and lives led the best we could until we found each other one morning not so long ago, and yet seemingly another lifetime.
She was about the prettiest newly-minted nurse you've ever seen, wasn't she? But P says I dwell too much on looks, so I'll leave it there. And she sure didn't stay a nurse for long, with bigger ambitions and a drive that still colors everything she does, from vocation, to creating a welcoming space in her homes, to spending hours on a gourmet meal instead of microwaving some prepackaged glop. "Perpetual Motion Peggy" I've labeled her. I doubt I'm the first to make that observation.
But maybe her life and mine for this last decade is in fact my story to tell, how that Sunday she arrived in this world all those years ago changed my life forever, although I gloomily parried and thrust my way through my first five-plus decades of existence with no experience of how wonderful life could be, would be, from that liminal moment on yet another Sunday when our paths crossed and I came to realize over the next several years that this was the one, the person I lacked the faith to believe could be sharing this time and space with me, but God brought us together despite that lack of faith.
[and that, ladies and gentlemen, marks the longest stream-of-consciousness sentence ever assembled on this blog. Joyce and Faulkner would be proud]
I'm never my most eloquent when I'm trying to articulate how I feel about P on these special days, birthdays and anniversaries and little milestones on the calendar only she and I know. But the sentiment is there, today a blend of love and gratitude to whomever or whatever brought this person into the world on May 4th in Knoxville, Tennessee.
If I viewed the world through a secular lens, I guess that would be Paul and Helen. That's not what my senses impart, however; there's the hand of the divine in it all, in a universe that contains enough good to bring her into the world.
Happy Birthday, Peggy Wylds. There's a bald, paunchy old ex-fighter pilot who thinks you hang the moon.
May the Fourth be with you Mom. 😘