Birthday joys and sorrows
February 1, 2007 at 2:42 Tuesday was my 45th birthday and I'd be lying if I said I didn't face it with some trepidation. It is always a day laden with emotion for me. Fortunately, I'm blessed with friends and family who remind me of all I have to celebrate in life, and I had a great day. The following post was originally a newspaper feature I wrote 10 years ago for The Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg, Virginia. It was honored with an award from Virginia Press Women and remains one of my favorite pieces of writing.
I was born on a snowy day in January. My father loved to tell the story. A volunteer fireman, he was fighting a fire in the bitter cold the night before I was born.
As he stood in the eerie glow of the blaze, he was comforted by the thought of my pregnant mother cozy in the bed of their home. The image warmed him and gave him hope.
Shortly after he made it home and slipped his weary body into bed, my mother delivered the news he didn’t want to hear: “Honey, it’s time.”
In the darkness before dawn, they set off for the hospital in a raging winter storm. My father’s Ford could barely navigate the icy roads as it slid on the hills and turns. It was hard to tell if my mother was gasping from pain or fear or both.
Despite the drama, they made it to the hospital and a short time later I arrived: red-faced, red-haired, and crying.
January 30, 1962.
My sister immortalized the date. On my 13th birthday, she gave me a 14-karat-gold oval locket, engraved on the front with two hearts and on the back with my name and the date.
It was an elegant and expensive gift for an awkward adolescent more at home in jeans and hiking boots than skirts and sweaters. I felt unworthy of it and yet secretly treasured my sister’s vision of me. Fourteen years my senior, she was also my godmother, tied to me by blood, spirit, and sacrament.
She would never fully comprehend the significance of her gift and of the date on the locket. Only seven years later, she died of cancer on my birthday.
January 30, 1982.
That evening my stricken family gathered in a circle around the kitchen table and ate my birthday cake in silence. Perhaps we were all thinking the same thing: “Heaven’s gate swings both ways.”
Each moment in eternity sees souls ascending and souls descending in a sacred dance. It seemed surreal to celebrate my birth and experience my sister’s death on the same day.
Three days later, I had plenty of time to reflect on the bittersweet nature of life’s rhythms as my mother, father and I battled a fierce winter storm on the way back from Louise’s funeral.
Were we sighing from pain or fear or both as we struggled home in the gray winter twilight?
A decade later, I buried my father in July and my mother in September of the same year. As fall turned into winter, my world grew smaller and darker, sadder and colder. I faced my first birthday without my parents with dread.
January 30, 1993.
My father wasn’t there to tell the dramatic story of my arrival. My mother would not bake a cake or sign a sentimental card. My sister had been dead for 11 long years. That birthday I felt so alone in the world: red-faced, red-eyed, and swollen with grief.
I clung to my gold locket as a talisman, a souvenir of the golden circle of my family. Two hearts—my mother and father, my sister and me—and the date that changed all our lives. January 30. My reminder that on any day, heaven’s gate swings both ways.
Two years later, my husband and I were ready to start our own family. I conferred with my doctor and was surprised when I calculated the optimum date for conception.
January 30, 1995.
It was snowing that night. I was wearing my gold locket and my mother’s wedding ring. Whiteness glimmered outside our frosted bedroom window, and in the heavens beyond the clouds, a gate silently swung open….
It’s been 45 years since my story began. During these long winter nights when wind and snow and memories press against the darkened windows, I cherish the company of my first born, my son, conceived 12 years ago on the date that Louise had carved in gold: January 30. A day of destiny.
January 31, 2007
Copyright 2007 Veronica McCabe Deschambault and V-Grrrl in the Middle. All rights reserved.
Reader Comments (28)
There's nothing to say except thank you for letting us read you.
Happy Birthday. And you share a birthday with another one of my closest friends here.
Thank you for sharing your story. I'm so sorry you lost your parents and sister so early in life. Even though they aren't here to share your birthday with you, I'm sure they're sending their love & birthday wishes in their own beautiful way.
Hugs!
Happy Birthday, my friend.
This is so finely written. It is carefully controlled, yet it has emotion. As I read it, I can feel its craft; each phrase and word choice must have been momentous. It is something a writer/writing teacher senses, perhaps, but the deliberation is palpable to me. I don't mean it in a negative way...it's tonal.
Happy Birthday, friend.