Happy Birthday!

What is it about birthdays that cause us to reminisce days gone by? My brother turned the big 5-0 a couple weeks ago. His wife planned a surprise “Mel’s Diner” party complete with A & W Root Beer, awesome burgers and chili dogs, and a DJ playing music from every decade my brother and I have lived through so far.  The invite said “No presents” with a large exclamation point after it.  I brought one anyway.  I wanted to give my brother something special, something meaningful.  After all, he had lived an entire half century and I hadn’t, well, not quite yet anyway.

I have this small 3” x 3” photo in a frame on a wall in my home.  It is a photo of my brother, my grandfather and grandmother, and myself.  We are probably 4 and 5 and we’re sitting on the couch snuggled next to our grandparents.  My brother is on the left, then grandpa, then grandma, then me on the right.  We are pretty dirty, even though my brother is in a white shirt and me in a dress.  My grandparents lived on a farm, after all.  As small as this photo is, it keeps a huge spot in my heart.  It has with it so many incredibly fun memories. I am the only one who has a copy of this photo so I took it in to see if it could be enlarged a bit, without distorting the image.  Unbelievably, they were able to take it all the way up to an 8’ x 10’ and it still looked great!  I placed it in a frame and wrapped it for my brother.  I included a card with these words inside, “Mel, you were my protector and my accomplice, my roommate and my confidante. I am so very thankful that God chose you to be my brother all these years.  I am blessed. Happy birthday! I love you.  Your sis, Melany.” 

He loved the photo and the card. He told me so several times throughout the night.  I saw him again this past Sunday at his granddaughter’s 5^th birthday party.  He said it again.  We watched my 3 year old grandson and my brother’s 3, 4, and 5 year old grandsons do incredibly brave and yet stupid things together.  They jumped in a little red wagon and rode it down a pretty steep hill with the tongue lying on the ground in front of it.  They rode down the same hill on little bicycles as fast as they possibly could without dumping it.  They laughed like crazy at each other and us old folks laughed right with them.  We could have stopped them, especially when we realized the wagon was filled with rocks, but we just didn’t have it in us.  The absurdity of what they were trying to pull off was too similar to some of the stunts we tried when we were younger.  It was kind of fun watching them be just as stupid. 

I turned a year older this week too.  There’s something about August birthdays in our family.  My grandpa always said the farmers came in from the fields in November.  It’s no wonder all the babies are born in August.  I suppose he was right.  Each year we celebrate another year aged.  Each year we realize another opportunity is lost.  Each year we realize another memory was created.  We celebrate because life is worth celebrating.  People die every day.  Loved ones go through really tough losses, despair, and pain on a regular basis.  Why not stop for a moment, look at the calendar, and say out loud “We made it another year.  It was sometimes hard, but it was good.  We could have gotten hurt worse than we did, but we didn’t.  And we laughed.  We laughed plenty.  Thank you Lord for brothers and sisters, for grandkids and friends.  Thank you for life and breath and wagons and bicycles.  Thank you for memories made and pains forgotten.”  Any of you having a birthday out there?  Happy Birthday, my friend… and yes, I’ll have another piece of cake.