Fast forward five years in the blink of an eye!  It was my little one’s fifth birthday and she wanted to have it at this indoor place where they have bounce houses and slides.  First they put you in a room that sort of resembles American Gladiator for littles.  There are these enormous balls on which kids try to hop all the way across or they fall into a bouncy pit.  It reminded me of watching frogs jump as the more nimble ones aced the course.  Then you can request bubbles to cascade down from the ceiling.  One can simply never be too cool for bubbles!  At a certain point they herd everyone into the next room with more slides and different bounce houses only they turn off the lights.  All these little white socks were running around glowing under the black lights.  They had glow necklaces and bracelets so wary parents could at least have some semblance of where their kiddos were.  There were blurry psychedelic images of little ones gone wild; like some sort of a kiddie rave.  Just before they all dropped I heard requests for “CAKE!”  So shoes were put back on, hand sanitizer was dispensed, and everyone rushed into the party room filled with sea star balloons and oceanic decorations.  Her theme this year was The Little Mermaid.  I do not want her to be spoiled (one reason why I always request the pleasure of her friends’ presence and not their presents.)  But I do want her to feel celebrated, special, loved, and happy, especially on her birthday.  She had been looking forward to having her friends at her party for months (an eternity to a child) and she was so excited.  The American author Bruce Barton said, “If you can give your child only one gift, let it be enthusiasm.”  I want her to have enthusiasm for God, helping others, caring for God’s creatures, protecting the environment, learning, and enthusiasm for life.  So I am really glad she began her next year pumped up.

All while I was growing up my daddy used to tease mama that she couldn’t wait just eleven days so I could be born on his birthday.  So when people found out I was due in October they kept asking if I wanted her on my birthday.  “NO!” I would emphatically declare and I’m sure some people thought I did not want to share my birthday.  I DID want to share a birthday … my late father’s.  I literally could not believe I got pregnant and then I could not believe I was due in October.  That’s why her middle name is Grace, because it is by the grace of God that she is here.  I like something the Spanish actress Penelope Cruz once said:

“All those cliches, those things you hear about having a baby and motherhood – all of them are true.  And all of them are the most beautiful things you will ever experience.”

My beautiful baby carries my late mother’s name and has my late father’s birthday.  And she was mine at last.

It’s funny.  My mother did not want any pictures of her pregnant for some reason and I never realized until it was almost too late I did not really have any of me expecting either.  As a strawberry blondish haired, green eyed child who had a red haired, brown eyed mother and a black haired, blue eyed father kids used to taunt me and say I was adopted.  Really I am a mix between the two.  I wanted to have at least one picture so my daughter could see I carried her and she was all ours.  My whole pregnancy was easy and wonderful without complications and I had just turned 41.  I never even had one day of morning sickness.  Right before we left for the hospital I asked my husband to take this.  From behind people didn’t know I was pregnant but when I turned around I usually got a lot of comments.  We were going to the same hospital where I was born in the same month only many moons ago.  I had no idea what to expect; I just knew my baby was almost in my arms.  The American Pulitzer Prize winning writer Carl Sandburg once said, “A baby is God’s opinion that life should go on.”  And I had been waiting on her my whole life.

I’m not sure what people expect from us.  We don’t own a pool, belong to a country club, or go to the beach more than once a year.  However, my father could not ever swim and it was very important to him to make sure that I could.  My fair red haired mother freckled her skin broiling in the sun to take me to swim lessons at the local community college.  Being part Indian, I just tanned a dark red and never burned.  But my mother still sacrificed to bring me and my father, who had contracted polio when he was three days old, only wished for me to know what he did not.  I went on to swim in junior high and high school and did pretty well.  All my parents really wanted though for me was to know that I could swim.  Before Mama passed she was very concerned that our little one knew how to swim on her own.  And I have somewhat stupidly and belatedly realized one MUST swim before going into the ocean.  So her Daddy and I were beyond proud and pleased when our little one was graduated from the beginning level to an intermediate one.  She went from a Dolphin 1 to a Dolphin 1-2.  Dolphin 2 is truly independent and that is what we are really looking forward to her achieving.  The American author Robert Collier, founder of Collier’s Weekly, once said:

“Most of us, swimming against the tides of trouble the world knows nothing about, need only a bit of praise or encouragement – and we will make the goal.”

That is all we want for our little one … to make the goal.

One of the earliest commercials I remember is of a gorilla banging around luggage in a zoo cage.  I am reminded of that every time I have a package delivered looking like this.  No matter how many bright orange signs or how many times the word “fragile” appears, my packages seem to arrive looking like a gorilla has beaten them to bits.  Sometimes I think the stickers actually invite transporters to manhandle the packages out of some perverse form of pleasure.  I have a mental image of two guys kicking it toward the truck and waiting for the sound of broken glass rattling before chunking it inside.  Whatever the case it never fails to make me dread opening a package like this praying the contents are still in one piece.  The Roman poet Ovid once said, “Beauty is a fragile gift.”  I would like to think that is not so.  I believe that beauty is strength in the face of adversity and the courage to stand up for what is right.  Beauty is tenacious, beauty is defiant, and beauty is unconventional.  Feelings may be fragile, egos may be fragile, but never beauty.  No, to me beauty is anything but fragile.