Happy Birthday, Mother

Dear Mother,

Today is your 90th birthday. I am sitting in bed in my bathing suit, determined to go swimming, but not until I've looked at all the photos of you at varying ages. I picked the one above for the blog. This is you when I was growing up. That's your sink, your kitchen. The curtains and the wallpaper changed, but not much else.

You're wearing a skirt, so this is the fifties. I may have taken this photo with my Brownie camera. You often sang in Dutch when you worked. Dinner was on the table every night at 5:30 when Daddy walked in the back door.

In summer, you sat on the porch and talked to neighbors and us and moved the hose around the front lawn every twenty minutes. You bought doughnuts at Dunford's Bakery. On Friday mornings, you chatted with Gus, the Cloverleaf milkman, at the kitchen table. He was German, you were Dutch. The war was over. So it goes.

You belonged to the Book of the Month Club and spent at least an hour each afternoon, reading a novel. Later, you read whatever novel I was reading. And you read my journals.

You sewed my clothes. One of my favorite memories is going downtown with you to the Yardstick to buy Bates cotton for a dress and then stopping at Pennies to buy Cashews for the ride home on the bus. On those outings, I had you all to myself.

You played board games with us.

You are ninety and dead. Your younger sister is 88 and alive. Your older brother is 92 and alive. Your younger brother is 84 and alive. Why not you? Why can't you be alive and well like Govert? Who gets to decide these things?

I have questions, Mother. How much of what you did was because of Daddy? Did YOU want to go to America too? Were you a believer?

I suppose none of it matters. We do what we do for whatever reasons. What does matter, Mother? If I could call you on the phone, that's what I'd ask. What does matter? And what are you doing now? Please tell me it's not an endless round of missionary work, and sitting through dull planning meetings. Are the older dead instructing the younger dead how to be a better dead person?

I hope you're playing baseball and soccer. I hope you're swimming the breaststroke. I hope you and Daddy sail in that sailboat for two. I hope he's telling jokes that make you laugh. I hope you're running a race or speeding on your bike.

Happy Birthday, Mother.