My 48th birthday was coming up this week.  It’s interesting to me to note how some have certain numbers they struggle with.  When I was 30 and not married I was not concerned in the least.  When I turned 40 I had gotten married but had no children, and I was beyond despondent.  I had no way of knowing in just three short months I would FINALLY be pregnant, by the grace of God and with the help of in invitro fertilization.  This has been the first year I have not felt excited, and I have no idea why.  First, it is much better than the alternative.  Second, I have an impossibly handsome husband and a precious, beautiful little girl.  Birthdays make me miss my folks, of course.  But for some reason I have struggled with this one.  Is it my mid-life crisis?  I have found myself taking stock of my life, my accomplishments, and my dreams.  The picture here was taken at the State Fair of Texas the day before my birthday.  Just when I thought I had ridden every ride there was (after a lifetime of living in Dallas) we accidentally discovered this log flume ride.  Our little one struck up a conversation with a lovely man who was working at the Fair and he inquired as to how many tickets we had left.  I told him we had enough for her to go alone on one more ride.  That darling man said, “Y’all come in twenty minutes to my ride there and I will get the three of you in as a family.”  My husband gets motion sick but we thought he could handle it.  None of us had ever ridden it!  As a child my fondest memory was getting to ride the log ride at Six Flags with my parents.  This was like a trip back in time, only cooler.  I used to love riding in the front, Mama in the middle, and Daddy in the back.   Now, thanks to this kind man, our little girl was in front, I was in the middle, and Burk brought up the rear.  It reminded me of La Salle’s Riverboat Ride, only this was all hidden and lit up.  They even had a “wolf!”  I have always found life cyclical.  Going through this awesome lit tunnel, I realized that I had so much more in my life to enjoy.  Our ride was magical and so unexpected!  I thought, as we entered under the waterfall, that this was what I had to look forward to:  life’s journey full of surprises.  The American actor and political activist Bradley Whitford said:

“Infuse your life with action.  Don’t wait for it to happen.  Make it happen.  Make your own future.  Make your own hope.  Make your own love.  And whatever your beliefs, honor your creator, not by passively waiting for grace to come down from upon high, but by doing what you can to make grace happen … yourself, right now, right down here on Earth.”

And so despite no parents and no cake the next day, I realized I still had a lot to celebrate.

Growing up, music was always an integral part of my life.  Not just trying to listen to disco from a crummy transistor radio outside of my apartment, but singing every Sunday in church and listening to Mama play the piano.  She had a beautiful baby grand and she tried giving me lessons; I was just too awful to appreciate them.  To this day it is one of my few regrets.  I always loved to sing, though, and I grew up in choirs.  From school to church to the Dallas Girls’ Chorus, I truly loved to sing.  It was as natural to me as breathing.  I cannot recall if I have mentioned it here before, but I was spoiled with an embarrassment of musical riches.  I used to come home from school to find my mother masterfully playing Claude Debussy’s “Claire de Lune” on her beautiful baby grand just for pleasure.  My husband and I started our only child, and my mother’s namesake, on piano lessons last year when she was in kindergarten.  It amazes me the way she gravitates to our little upright for no apparent reason.  Whereas my “free stylings” were always discordant, our little one’s manage to sound like actual songs.  I cannot tell you how many times my husband has told her what a great job she did playing something she’d simply made up.  It is wild to me how life goes in cycles.  I used to be greeted at home after school with the sounds of my mother’s playing.  Now I hear the sounds of our only child gracefully picking out notes after school as I am going about my work.  The late German Romantic composer Robert Schumann once said, “When you play, never mind who listens to you.”  That is how I have always felt about singing.  Music, in whatever form, I believe can bring happiness.  And I think one of the universal things which unite us all is music.

So, there we were rollerskating around the rink.  My little family was doing great.  But after awhile I told my husband my toes were completely numb.  Of course I’d brought my own skates, just as I had done every time I have gone since the sixth grade.  It occurred to me that perhaps they were now too small.  After all, it was (gasp) thirty-five years ago that I got them.  I sure couldn’t squeeze myself into my old Jordache jeans anymore.  And my feet did get larger after I had our little girl.  “Baby Doll why don’t you just get rentals?” my husband asked.  “WHAT?!” I disdainfully shrieked.  “And look uncool?!”  And then I noticed them.  “Real” skates for sale behind a glass counter with a huge crack in the top.  I looked at the black speed skates and remembered Daddy always said white skates were for young ladies.  Thinking of my father, I looked over to the white skates.  They did not have many.  The owner explained they were all pre-owned, which is why the prices were so great.  Fortuitously, they had a beautiful stark white pair in my size, which is now an eight.  The leather had barely been broken in and the stamping on the inside immaculate.  Gilding the proverbial lily, instead of the white wheels I’d always had these were in my beloved blue!!!  What are the odds?  I wound up with $350 skates for $60!  Suddenly I realized how dingy my childhood ones had become.  I was thrilled!  Plus I could feel my toes; it turns out my old ones were a six and a half!  Sitting on the toad stool as I had done so many times before, I laced up my skates and stood.  Carefully, I made my way smoothly from the floor to the rink.  I had not gone so much as ten feet when my wheels literally slid out from under me.  That had never happened to me in my entire life.  Sure, I had fallen when I was very young, but this was like some poor unfortunate unwittingly slipping on a banana peel.  My little one saw me fall and not get up.  My left wrist ballooned like an elephant in under a minute.  With a certainty, I knew it was broken.  I sat there stunned, upset to see my girl crying, and watched as my husband came rushing over.  I had been so derisive about looking uncool using rental skates.  No, uncool is watching a man twenty years your junior call you “ma’am” and help lift you up (along with your husband) while you allow yourself passively to be wheeled off the floor in shame.  I could not help but think of the scripture in Proverbs 16:18 which says, “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.”  I wound up in the ER in traction and twelve days later I would have surgery to realign my shattered wrist, now held together with a plate under the muscle of my arm along with nine screws.  I’d never had a cast and I had never had surgery like this before.  I am still recovering and even typing this hurts.  It all just happened so fast … pride truly goeth before a fall.  I shall skate again but I have decided to put my old white wheels on my new boots; those sleek blue ones are greased lightning.

On this day I took my beloved and my little one to the place that held my fondest childhood memories — my old rollerskating rink.  The highlight of my week as a kid was being dropped off on Saturday afternoons while I blissfully skated to disco under the twinkling lights of a giant spinning mirror ball.  I remember not having money to play Pac-Man but I didn’t care; I just loved to skate.  Each week my daddy gave me one quarter and I used it to buy a Dr. Pepper with crushed ice.  When I got thirsty enough I would come racing in backward toward the railing, only using my toe stops at the very last second.  I was so cool.  My childhood was financially difficult and I worried for my folks a lot, but my father always found a way to provide for me to go and skate my troubles away.  For those few hours I had the best clothes (no one knew my Ralph Lauren polo shirts came from the thrift shop) and I had my Jordache jeans along with the very best skates, which my parents sacrificed tremendously in order for me to have.  Back in 1980 I believe they were over $200!  It was a really big deal and I always knew it.  I competed and won in contests much like one sees in the Winter Olympics ice dance today.  Sadly, rollerskating was never made an Olympic sport despite the many local, regional, and national titles for which skaters trained and earned.  I skated solo, with a partner, and even did the tedious figure eights just like they still do in ice skating.  At a very tender age I was hired to teach grown-ups to skate.  I think I was around ten.  I was really proud as it was my first job besides babysitting.  But mostly, every Saturday from two to five p.m. I reigned over that rink which was my escape from the world.  The famous retired American figure skater Dorothy Hamill is quoted as having said, “I’m really very glad that I had skating to be my love and my escape.  I think that it always gave me something that made me feel good, and it was music, and it was peaceful, and not a lot of the other stresses of life.”  I felt the exact same way.  No one was there to make fun of the car we drove, or to judge that we lived in an apartment; they just knew I was the reigning queen of the rink.  On the final skate people would often clear the floor to watch my partner and I do “the Glide.”  As a teenager I slowly tapered off but I never lost my love of rollerskating.  Years ago I can remember going with my then future husband on a date and being impressed that he didn’t skate dorky.  We went to a rink that was closer to where I lived.  The last time I went rollerskating was there with my husband and we took our little one who was about three.  Heartbreakingly, that rink closed shortly afterwards and this was our first time returning to the glossy boards.  Now our girl is about to turn seven and I thought it would be cool to throw her a seventies rollerskating party.  This brings us back to my beloved childhood roller rink.  I was thrilled to note the giant oh-so-’70’s carpeted “toad stools” remained where one can lace up their skates.  But time had taken her toll and faded the glory of my youth.  I had not brought my husband here before and I wanted to introduce my little one to my childhood refuge as well.  I wanted her to experience the heady freedom of gliding along to great songs in a darkened rink, aided only by the twirling sparkles of a huge disco ball and colored lights pulsing in time to the music.  Gazing up, I realized the great glitter ball was frozen, and the colored streamers that used to billow from the ceiling aided by strong air-conditioning were no longer there.  A visit to the once sacrosanct DJ booth revealed the state-of-the-art 1970’s soundboard had caught fire and burned up some time ago.  No matter, I was back and now I had my precious family with me.  I skated backwards as I taught our little girl to skate forwards.  She was so impressed and I found myself feeling cool again despite the fact that currently I have no prayer (or desire) of fitting into any type of tight jeans ever again.  To be continued …

August 5 is National Friendship Day.  The late American radio host Bernard Meltzer once said, “A true friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg even though he knows that you are slightly cracked.”  Some of my friends have moved away or we have lost touch over time.  Others were once mentors and now we are friends as adults.  I have managed to make a few newer friends for which I am grateful.  I have also made some interesting cyber friends which, when I was a kid, they called pen pals.  Since I have stayed in the same area my entire life, we often run into one of my oldest friends, whom I have known since the second grade.  As far as I’m concerned, there is a true place in heaven for ANYone who can endure a half hour discourse on the lineage of “My Little Pony” from my little one and not run screaming for the hills.  I own a petsitting business and some of my clients have become friends.  Then there are friends I have made through our parish.  One of them I tried and tried for months to meet up with to no avail.  Something always happened on my end and I could not go but she never once complained.  Frankly, I cannot believe she still wanted to be friends with me.  Not wanting to call off our girls’ dinner yet again, I asked if she minded if my little one tagged along.  She texted that it was fine and my six-year-old felt so grown up!  We all devoured these incredibly delicious deviled eggs — which were delicately spiced with cumin and sriracha.  I suppose friendships are a bit like eggs … they can get scrambled, they can stink, or they can hard boil into something wonderful and resilient.  I may be slightly cracked, but I consider myself to be a loyal friend — and a good egg.