Presented Posthumously

I can't remember a birthday that wasn't beautiful.  Even last year, when my birthday coincided with Good Friday, there were no thunderstorms at three in the afternoon; there were hardly any clouds at all.  We spent the day basking in the sunlight, riding bikes, drinking wine on a patio shaded by hanging potted plants.  We found swings for flying--and jumping from.  I fell and scraped my knee, laughing the whole way and then getting back on to try it again.

That morning I'd woken up to the sound of birds chirping and a cool, fresh spring breeze through my open window.  My mother was already up, cutting up fruit and putting it in the special birthday bowl with the strawberries painted around the inside lip.  She squealed with delight and hurried to come give me a hug when she noticed me coming out to the kitchen.  Then we shared the last skinny wedge of pound cake she had made, a recipe of my grandmother's.

"You're a lot like her," she said, tearing up a bit.  I could feel my own eyes tearing up and glanced into my cup of coffee. Being like my Grandma Genny is something I've always aspired to, assuming it was a lost cause, my own temperament being too impatient and short-fused to be like the calm, elegant woman I knew from photographs.  And that's the only way I know her; her heart gave out eight days after I'd been born, proving that when one goes out, another comes in.

Other than her name, my Grandma Genny gave me her quiet presence, her resourcefulness and her musical abilities.  That's what my mother tells me.  Grandma didn't waste a thing: she used cereal box wax paper to wrap up cakes and leftovers, and she recycled the rinse water from one load of laundry for the next, using the last tub of water to scrub floors.  She built a desk once, using a pattern and materials she'd ordered from a catalog and reupholstered a bench that had been falling apart.  When my mom told me this, I finally felt connected to something that was bigger than myself and yet, of myself.

April 2nd is always the most beautiful day of the year.  The weather makes everything feel like a rebirth, like cool grass between bare toes or a bashful ray of sun on your face.  It doesn't seem to matter what the weather's doing in the days before my birthday--or even if there's been snow the week before--I can count on one nice day to spend outside, to celebrate being alive.  And I know that's not by any coincidence.