Celebrating Life Over 50 in the Puget Sound Region and Beyond

birth Day-date

November 30, 2024 at 12:20 p.m.

...by Lois Greene Stone

"Watch me. Watch me, Mom. It’s 2024 already, and my birthday month." I look to the sky and whisper to the quiet air. My current old-old age is disbelief and time is measured now in days not years. Within my mind, I re-play some meaningful markers of my passages through time.

"Can I’ve the creepy paper? Can I?" I giggle at Mommy.

"Crepe paper, not creepy."

I wrap the crinkly stuff around my skirt but it tears when I try and tuck it into the elastic at my waist. Mommy smiles, and fixes it. She puts a piece over my satin hairbow, and I climb on a table.

"Watch me. Watch me." I shout and begin dancing. "I’m five. I’m five." I twirl and like the sound of the paper moving. Baby sister who’s only one, and big sister now seven, pay no attention to me. "Whee." I pretend to tap dance to get their attention but Mommy reminds me to be careful on the table ‘cause I can fall off. So what. I can’t get hurt. I’m five.

I see Mommy light a match, touch the stove to turn on flames, and start cooking my special-day meal. All I want is cake. And I can blow out my own candles now. And I’ll go to kindergarten this year with my big sister holding my hand and crossing the wide-wide street with me. Oh five is just such fun.

I put baby, holding her all by myself to do this, into the wicker basket of clean clothes and diapers Mommy’s taken off the line that’s on the roof of the apartment building. I climb in the basket and my creepy paper skirt tears even more.

"Don’t let Joy eat that paper!" Mommy warns. "And you’re getting your shoes all over the clean clothes."

"I know. It’s soft in here. I’ve shiny-shiny patent leather shoes on. They’re so special they can’t get anything dirty." Mommy grins and shakes her head. She doesn’t want to scold me on my birthday. With motions, I take the baby’s hands and recite ‘Birthday me, birthday me baker’s man, bake me a cake as fast as you can’. Seven-year-old Carole helps Mommy at the stove but I know she’s happy for me. I put out my right hand: I’m the age of all my fingers there.

"Dear Diary. I’m nine." I’m writing this in my own bedroom. When I was six, and we all saw this house, I ran upstairs first and found a sunlit room with a window that had an outside box of flowers leaning against the house, and the floor was not wood but like Grandma’s kitchen one yet with checker board and other games designed right into the linoleum. I shouted that this was mine. I didn’t know my parents had never before lived in a house.

"Diary. I’m never-ever going to be a single number again after this." I imagined the double-digit of ten was going to open magic doors for me to walk through and I would really be a big girl. Nine was great, and I was going to a different summer camp in a few months and was excited about that. Mom was already sewing labels into all of my clothing. "Diary. Wait until I tell you about my birthday ice cream that Daddy had a place make into shapes. Real shapes. There’s a horse, and a ballerina, and ice skates, and everything. They’re sitting in something called dry ice, but how can ice be dry, and why won’t he allow me to touch it and says it’ll burn my skin. Makes no sense. But the ice cream is wonderful to look at. I’ll have the best party ever."

Sixteen. Carole has made me a corsage of pink ribbons and sugar, like I did for her two years ago. My dress is sheer brown silk over turquoise taffeta and has a brown velvet band circling my tiny waistline. I know I’m pretty. The dining room is elegant, as Mom always makes it, and Dad has his flood lights and 16mm bulky camera ready to take movies when guests come.

Twelve-year-old Joy helps Mom with the finishing touches on the table, and Carole turns on the 78-rpm record player in the living room and my guests begin to dance. Mom and Dad have the luxury of carpeting now, but we dance on that just like we used to on the wood except our feet sometimes sink in the lush pile. I know the meal will be perfect but I don’t tell Mom, and the cake is so gorgeous I’ll hate to disturb it with a knife. This is a grown-up party; I’m the center of attention; I like that.

Twenty. I’m a junior in college. I’d rather not take the train home for my birthday and will celebrate it at school. After all, I can always have a belated one with family at some point. The universe still revolves around me, and I love school, the scenery of the campus with rolling hills and two lakes, studies, the sensation I have surrounded by all the books in the library, running on the track early in the morning before exams, performing in theatre productions, being the songstress in my dorm, writing skits and doing artwork for inter-college activities, and sharing my school tales with loving parents who always listen to me and don’t mind the expense of my long-distance phone calls. Pieces of me, inside, still love hair bows and crepe paper. The sewing skills my mother taught me are used as are my decade of piano lessons when I’m at a dorm party where there’s a piano. Seems nothing of my childhood was wasted; even ballet made me move gracefully. I telephone and share my day; they understand and give me freedom to grow without guilt.

We bury my father one month later.

Numbers. Grade point averages, price of postage stamps, tax percentages, clothing sizes, calendar dates, birthdays....... All digits affect us.

We hear a cliche ‘you’re only as old as you feel’ and know the expression is quite ridiculous. Many of us feel we’re still seventeen while the numbers are decades more, but we’re not seventeen and the gift of moments has a ticking clock. My older sister, by two years, has been deceased since 2005.

My tiny dress size, and hair color that continually grows without grey anyplace defies time. Yet, on the annual specific date my mother’s body ushered in my life, I’m even more aware of the very word ‘years.’ No family member has ever lived to be my current numeral, and, with disbelief, I buried my dad seventy years ago. Numbers. My spouse holds my hand and knows we’re privileged with our three children, their mates, the 15 offspring from their bodies, the 13 (so far) great-grandchildren, sharing ‘life.’ As a physician, he knows how fragile the human body really is and doesn’t take for granted our longevity. But we count by days, currently, no longer even by months or years.

"Mommy. Can you fix my creepy paper skirt?" Inside my head, I’m dancing on the mahogany coffee table in an apartment with radiators, ice box, stove lit with a match to ignite flame, wicker basket of line-dried-on-the-roof cotton clothes, diapers and baby sister, oilcloth kitchen floor. Inside my head, I feel big sister’s hand helping me cross a wide boulevard for kindergarten, I see my age-six very own bedroom in a big house with forced air heat and no radiators, I taste the coldness and sweetness of the ice cream shapes at my 9th party, I smell the fragrance of the dining room flowers and foods arranged carefully for my Sweet Sixteen.

"Watch me. Watch me." I look to the sky and whisper to the quiet air. "You’ve watched over me, and I’m thankful." I force a shallow sigh. "But I can no longer twirl and I use a walker. My hearing can’t be helped even with aids, and neither can my failing eyesight. But my brain so remembers! And I can feel the sensation of twirling. Can you see? Do you remember? Thanks......."

reprinted Oct. 2019 for Scarlet Leaf Review

NOMINATED, BY SCARLET LEAF REVIEW, FOR PUSHCART PRIZE 2019. Updated in 2024 for Northwest Prime Time

Lois in 1954 in the circle skirt she made herself

Lois Greene Stone, writer and poet, has been syndicated worldwide. Poetry and personal essays have been included in hard & softcover book anthologies. Collections of her personal items/ photos/ memorabilia are in major museums including twelve different divisions of The Smithsonian. The Smithsonian selected only her photo to represent all teens from the 1950's; a large showcase in its National Museum of American History featured her photo, hand-designed clothing, and her costume sketches. ‘Girlhood’ exhibit opened 10-2020 and began touring Jan. 2023.