If I Had a Pick-Up, It Would have Mudflaps

Today is my Mom's birthday. I know you're turning that idea over very slowly in your mind right now (the I have a mother part, not the she's having a birthday today part). You are not the first and you will not be the last attempting to entertain that thought.

My mother and her husband, my father, had six children-three of each sex. The motion to have the same number of children but only two of each sex was defeated, mom once suggested to me in a dream, on a voice vote surrounding a technicality. I choose to always believe her, even if none of that exchange ever happened.

My parents were married nearly thirty years and had raised three of us to adulthood (okay, Evan and Kelly to adulthood and me to older and let's leave it at that) when my father passed away of a heart attack leaving Mom with Kara, Jill and Adam to raise by herself. A woman who could be married to our Dad for thirty years, was and is, more than equal to that task.

The three were raised and raised up, as were we all, by a remarkable woman whose praises I sing (not literally at the request of dogs everywhere) not only because she's my mom but because she's the mom of Evan, Kelly, Kara, Jill and Adam, a wonderful grandmother and a superlative great grandmother.

Each of us and all of us have, in our way, become the people she saw we could be (I am sure) from the moment she laid eyes on us. It was love at sight for her and for us and I can assure you it wasn't easy because some of us were not, and are still not, always so lovable.

She'll be at the beach today where she lives in Florida because why else would you move there and trust me, from her childhood at Howard Beach to now, she has had an affection for the ocean. She's weathered every changing in the time and tides of her life more than even she might like to recall so I hope today, her birthday is beyond anything and everything she ever wanted because the woman who raised us only wanted the world for us, her children.

For herself, our happiness was her joy. Happy Birthday, Mom!
-bill kenny