HAPPY FRIGGING BIRTHDAY TO ME

Today I am 57. Lucky me! It is also my oldest grandson's birthday. He is 13. My oldest granddaughter will be 16 in two days.

My body feels 57. I just can't get my mind much past being 30. I have always been active and in good shape. A shattered leg from a fall took care of that a little over a year ago. I think, though, my strength is coming back so if I have to live with some pain and have a few limitations, so be it. I have decided to go for my former life. If I get hurt again, those are the breaks (heh! heh!). I can't waste time worrying about it and favoring my leg. Life is too damn short!

I have had a strange life. When I started high school, my Mom let me date a senior. Consequences? I was married six weeks before my fifteenth birthday. The groom was couple of months short of eighteen. Needless to say, we were divorced a year later. Would I change it? I have wonderful daughter number one. Who would ever change that?

Anyway, I had gone right back to school after my daughter's birth so I was able to finish high school. I was a good student. I was especially good at bookkeeping and won an award. Little did I know it was a sign of things to come. I had OJT in my senior year. The man I worked for was President of the local bank so I had a job assured when I graduated.

I was accepted at our State University. I wanted to be a high school history or English teacher. I had a little one I couldn't bear to leave, though, so I didn't go. Years later, I found out that the state would have helped me out and I could have gotten an apartment and taken her with me. We were just not welfare people, though. We were poor but we were proud.

When I was nineteen and working at the bank, my mother insisted I stay home one Saturday night to meet someone my cousin was bringing down. That's how I wound up married to an alkie for twelve years. He didn't drink at all the summer before we married. He started at the wedding reception and never stopped again. He wouldn't work and he beat the shit out of me. I didn't leave until twelve years later when he started being mean to the kids. I just have always believed you must try hard to make marriage work. Would I change anything? I have wonderful daughter #2 and that's your answer.

Now I am married (for 24 years) to a man who respects me and treats me well. I have been at this job (bookkeeping) for 25 years. We live in a different state and life is easier here. He works just as hard as I always have (maybe harder). He maybe liked to party too much on the weekends when he was younger, but he outgrew it. We are a good match. We maybe aren't the most fascinating couple in the world, but we are happy.

I especially love about him how much he loves my daughters and the grandchildren. We helped my younger daughter with the first granddaughter and that one can melt his heart with one tear. He had no children of his own. The experience of being a grandparent from infancy on has been one of the blessings of his life. Actually, it's the biggest blessing of anyone's life.

Anyway, that's who I am. Plain old me having a plain old birthday.

Oh, did I forget to mention I will be in Vegas tonight for three days? I told you my life has changed!