Reflections on Reminiscing
My youngest child turned twenty-one this month. I could not be with him, but I sang the Happy Birthday song on his voicemail and texted him emoji hugs. Later in the day, we finally had a birthday conversation and afterward, I browsed through photo albums that provoked tears.
Reliving his early years had me reminiscing about the milestone birthdays of my own. When I turned twenty-one, I was four months pregnant with his oldest sibling, which meant I abstained from any ritual drinking parties. While I do not remember what I did to celebrate, I would not have been upset about missing out because I was gleefully, newly married and thrilled to be expecting my first child.
Nor can I specifically recall what I was doing on my eighteenth birthday, although I know I was away from home as a college first-year student and proud that I would finally be able to vote in elections, even if I had to use an absentee ballot. My sixteenth birthday is missing from my memory, too, except for a vague memory of my grandmother reciting in a sweet, grandmotherly way, “Sweet sixteen and never been kissed.” No comment on that.
While growing up, my mother’s normal custom was to treat the birthday child to a specially requested meal she prepared. On one birthday during my high school years, however, my parents took me to a restaurant to celebrate my birthday. Although I am unsure which birthday, during that calendar year, we each got to choose a particular restaurant, and my choice was a local Chinese eatery.
The year I turned thirteen, my mother made a delicious spaghetti dinner and allowed me to invite six of my girlfriends to commemorate becoming a teenager. While unable to recall the names of all the girls who came to this celebratory meal, I remember feeling special as we sat around the dining room table normally reserved for family holiday gatherings. Google research suggests that since my birthday fell on a Wednesday that year, the occasion may have occurred on the Saturday following my birthday.
Amidst mementos from my elementary years are photos of school and neighborhood friends enjoying festive games during a backyard gathering. Frankly, I am uncertain whether the event was a birthday party for me, one of my sisters, or simply a fun summer get-together my parents threw for all of us. My favorite activity was the relay race which required the team participants to put on oversized clothes, run to the end of the yard and back, remove the items, and then hand them to the next teammate.
Besides the birthdays mentioned above, significant occasions of my youth are also memory blurs, among them my First Holy Communion and my eighth and twelfth-grade graduations. I am sure I felt proud and excited but as an adult, I am mostly in awe of the beautiful dresses I wore for the occasions. My mother was a self-taught seamstress skilled enough to sew my junior prom gown!
When the day came for the most significant moment of my life, my mother was not with me. Sadly, she died the previous winter and was not available to sew my wedding dress. But God blessed me with a college girlfriend who took me shopping to choose a pattern, find the perfect material, and then come home with me to sew the long, white gown on my mother’s sewing machine.
My childhood was certainly different from that of the young son I watched growing up for twenty-one years. When he is my age, I sure hope he can look back with fondness at all the wonderful, fun times he had with his family, but mostly I pray that a sense of tenderness and joy embraces him whenever he thinks about his childhood. I want him never to forget that even if he does not recall specifics, he was treasured always, just as I was, during every moment.
