My birthday is this Sunday but if I were some social conservative, right wing, fundamentalist fool I’d have to say that it really was nine months ago. After all, life begins at conception, no? So, instead of March 21, 1933 I should be celebrating June 21 of the year before. I can almost remember the moment.
He: That was quite a sprint.
She: Just nestle in and make yourself at home.
He: What’s a classy egg like you doing in a hole like this?
She: Just hanging out, biding my time.
He: Do you come here often?
She: About once a month.
He: I’ve been tailing you for some time.
She: Come on up to my place and we’ll make music together.
Me: I hope I get the best of you both
Them: Be quiet you’re not sentient yet.
Embryonically speaking you did good, Mumsie.. I sloshed around like the fish that I was according to the ontology rule book and then moved on, picking up all the requisites for three semesters.
No regrets. I am missing a few cards but maybe they just weren’t in your deck. The music gene didn’t survive the big swim; it must have sloughed off your sperm, Dad. Even if I didn’t make the Glee Club, being branded a listener, I did learn from you how to listen hard.
And thanks, Mom, for your double-helix nurturing gene even if you squeezed some life out of me, umbilically, holding on a bit too tight. In that fetal buffet, I may have gotten some of your demons on my plate. But some I grew by myself which I count on my daughters to dispel. The oy turns to ah in one exhalation as I blow them away with the candles on my cake.
Am I right that you never went on vacation……except when you did? My earliest picture of you is the sepia one in the family album taken of the two of you frolicking on a hillside in Hunter, N.Y. The date on the back says June ’32.
A coquettish turn of your head, Mom, was met by the twinkle that was me in his eyes. Did I ever thank you for all that; to be seeded, especially in that year of dread and woe? I hope your shouts were in unison and sufficient to scatter the gloom.
Blessed was I to have begun on a bucolic summer roll in the hay out of the urgency of love, more potent than the press of hard times.
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Happy birthday! This is one of the funniest sweetest birthday meditations I've ever seen. And, as my body already starts to fall apart in my late 30s, thanks for being a good indicator that one's 70s can still be pretty great.
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Gabe
Norm, the egg and sperm conversation made me laugh. Particularly, the line: "What's a classy egg like you doing in a hole like this?"
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