HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!

Today is my 61^st birthday. It has been a day not unlike many days in my life. This one started in San Ramon where I took my father to a doctor appointment this morning then drove home to Sacramento for my birthday party with Lou’s family.

Me blowing out the candles on my Boston Creme Pie!

I have a “Life’s Little Pleasures” list and at the top of it is to take my “O” Magazine and treat myself to lunch at Taco Bell (I LOVE Taco Bell!) And since today was my birthday, I thought what better way to celebrate? I ordered my usual bean burrito with no onions and a crunchy taco, then opened my “O” to an interview by Maria Shriver of 75 year old poet, Mary Oliver.

Mary was commenting that she has really come into her own recently when Maria interjected, “We live in a society where people think they are too old at 55 or 60 to do anything else. And you’re 75! I find it fascinating that you’ve become happier, you’re braver, you’re more excited…” Maria’s observation continued but what made me stop in mid-burrito bite was the “too old at 55 or 60”. Wow!

I suddenly realized that I’m just getting started at 61 years old – how cool is that? On my drive back home, my head was spinning with thoughts of all the adventures and blessings the coming years will bring. I'm actually looking forward to next year when I can collect social security AND get my senior National Parks pass for $10 that's good forever!

I share my life with a wonderful, supportive man who will be 56 years old in a few weeks - doesn't really qualify me for cougar status but he IS a younger man. He is sweet and handsome and sexy and I still find him extremely attractive after nearly ten years together. We share a passion for travel and have no intention of slowing down anytime soon. On our Europe trip last year, we met a couple from Michigan. The man was 90 years old and still fascinated by every experience. That gives me 30 more years at least!

Both my amazing son and beautiful daughter-in-law are smart, talented and successful. I am extremely proud and adore them beyond description. If I am blessed with a grandchild that will simply be icing on the cake – just to be prepared I’m making a list (literally) of all the things I want to do with him or her.

At 82 years old after surviving a stroke, two back surgeries, MRSA infections and brain surgery to insert a shunt for Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus, my father is holding his own and his mind is sharp as a tack. Yes, I have to spend at least every other weekend taking care of him and his household, but that’s okay. One good thing to come out of all this trauma is that my sister and I are closer than we have EVER been in our lives! She has listened to countless hours of whining, bitching and venting – all of which has helped keep me somewhat sane.

I have "in-laws" whose company I enjoy, several good friends who I know I can count on when the chips are down and I am fortunate to have a part time travel agent job where I can basically make my own hours. I'm semi tech savvy and have Facebook and Twitter accounts - I'm finally able to pretty much work my touch screen phone, too.

All in all, being 61 ain’t half bad. I’m healthy. I feel good. Most of my mind is still in tact and functioning. Sure, when I look in the mirror I see a few more pounds than I want or wrinkles where there used to not be wrinkles – and for god’s sake don’t ever look down into a mirror if you’re over 50, you’ll see your grandmother! I’ve gotten used to the never-ending hot flashes and can always hope that someday they will disappear completely. We still hike and play tennis – some days my feet hurt or my knees ache, but not that bad. Age is just a number and I’m done worrying about it. So, Happy Birthday to me!

HAPPILY UNMARRIED!

Hey, I need your help. There has to be a better way to refer to someone who you are in a long term, committed relationship with…….when I say, “This is my ????, Lou” what do I call him? Here are some of the words or phrases that just don’t seem to do it justice.

Boyfriend – we’re not in high school and he’s certainly much more than that.

Significant Other – sounds a little contrived, but I use it occasionally.

Partner – seems more like a business deal.

Domestic Partner – does that make me the Domestic Goddess?????

Other Half – okay, but doesn’t really describe our relationship.

Lover – again, much more to it than that.

POSSLQ – Person of Opposite Sex Sharing Living Quarters. Please, definitely a term made up by the U. S. census.

Spousal Equivalent – this is what Joy Behar calls the person with whom she shares her life.

Most of the time, I end up just saying, “This is Lou”, and the other person can come to his or her own conclusions. I do enjoy saying we are “happily unmarried” or in a state of “unwedded bliss”. But, there should be a word that describes a permanent, long term, committed relationship. Please help me figure that out – give me some suggestions!

MARE ISLAND

There is rarely a dull moment living with this man.....and for that I am eternally grateful! He keeps saying that we are running out of nearby things to do, but yet he keeps finding more things for us to do. I've done so many things with Lou that I never would have thought I wanted to do on my own. Yesterday, we did a tour of Mare Island.....the old naval shipyard near Vallejo.

I've lived in the Bay Area my entire life and had never been to Mare Island. The tours are given by appointment only. Lou called and discovered that the entire museum is maintained by and the tour is given by volunteers. He talked to Joyce, who said, "Sure I can give you a tour at noon" so we grabbed a couple snacks and headed to Vallejo, a little over an hour away. Joyce looked like she's seen quite a few years and I'd say she was in her 70s if not older. She was a great tour guide!

Our first stop was the huge museum showing many aspects of shipbuilding. Joyce was quite opinionated and made sure she shared those opinions with us! I liked that.

Joyce telling Lou something about the machine shop display.

I loved this sign that hung in one of the shipbuilding shops.

Our next stop was the cemetery on the island. Apparently there is a feud between the historical volunteers and a woman who "runs" the cemetery. Joyce was quite vocal about her dislike for the woman although she did consede that cemetery has been improved......ahhh, volunteer politics!

I'm not sure what the attraction is but Lou and I are both fascinated by cemeteries.

Some of the old, decaying headstones in the small cemetery.

After a stroll through the cemetery with Joyce's stories of Medal of Honor winners, naval officers and Russians buried there, we headed to St. Peter's Chapel. We were told that weddings are still held there and it houses the largest collection of Tiffany stained glass windows under one roof west of the Mississippi River. Fortunately, the navy has covered the outside of the windows with plexiglass to protect the stained glass.

The exterior of St. Peter's Chapel on Mare Island.

A few of the stained glass windows in the chapel.



The Admiral's House is 10,000 square feet and is available for receptions or other functions. This was the largest residence on the island....several others were about 7500 square feet. Many of those were purchased by individuals or are available for purchase if anyone wants to live on Mare Island. Joyce didn't tell us the going prices.

The Admiral's House on Mare Island.

A view from the large verandah of the Admiral's House.

Our two and a half hour tour concluded with a visit to the park. This gazebo is one of their historic artifacts which has been restored. Many of the buildings on Mare Island haven't been so lucky.

Joyce told us of many buildings which are probably beyond repair at this point. They can't even be demolished since that takes money and the money just isn't there. These Victorian homes are on blocks waiting to be relocated, hopefully, before they crumble. Joyce told us how the teenagers ride their skateboards all over the island and vandals get some twisted pleasure from destroying these relics from our not so distant past. They just keep trying to stay one step ahead but it seems to be a losing battle.

Hopefully these old homes will be restored in time.

It was a good tour and I was impressed that there are people who care enough to keep this history alive with no compensation. The sad thing is that I just don't understand why people feel a need to vandalize and destroy things for no apparent reason. Those are the ones who we ought to just slap upside the head and say, "Stop it!"

Birthdays & Eric Clapton

I just love how lately my birthdays seems to be a month long celebration! A friend told me long ago that you keep celebrating them, you just stop counting them.....well, I stopped counting long ago. My family has four birthdays in less than three weeks.....mine on March 21, my brother-in-law Steve's on March 24, Darrin's on March 31 and Lou's on April 9.

Since we are all spread out now, we do one big birthday celebration during that time. This year it will be a brunch in at my dad's on April 3. Between that party, a get together with Lou's family, lunch with the ladies at work, the actual day when I treat myself to something and a couple other events, I end up with weeks of fun things! This year even started earlier.

Last Tuesday, Lou came up to me with his hand behind his back and said, "I need to give you part of your birthday present early." He produced two tickets to see Eric Clapton on Thursday evening, March 3rd. They had just opened up some tickets off to the side of the stage in the front row of the lower section! We were basically in line with the people in the first row of floor seating and maybe 10-15 feet further away from the stage......plus he got them for the same price as the nose bleed seats!

We snuck in our little camera but it turns out everyone had cameras.

Some people are singers and musicians and some are performers. We've been fortunate enough to see some spectacular performers (Mick Jagger and Bon Jovi come to mind) and some great singers (The Eagles reunion tour), but with Eric Clapton it is all about the music. He is way into blues and that was the majority of his show. It was half an hour until he did "I Shot the Sheriff" and another half hour until he launched into "Layla". Everything had a bluesy take on it and that's what I expected from Eric Clapton. He traditionally sang one of my favorite songs of his, "Wondeful Tonight"......a love letter to his then wife Patty Boyd (who he supposedly stole from George Harrison!). Not as great as my Valentine's love letter, but pretty close.

I tried to upload one of the videos that Lou took with our little camera, but this site doesn't seem to do videos (or I haven't figured it out yet). Here is the YouTube link if you wanted to check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHG0Vt21bCQ Hope it works.

Appearance-wise I've got to say Eric Clapton could easily have been mistaken for a local vagrant.....long disheveled hair, grubby and unshaven for several days, black square glasses, ill-fitting blue jeans and a large dark shirt. I know the man is 65 years old, and I'm not far behind, but come on. Fortunately, the music is still great and it was nice to sit back, relax and groove to the beat.....we didn't even need our earplugs sitting that close.

My birthday celebration has begun and won't end until our April 3rd brunch.....at least there are some good things that come with age!

MY MOM

My mother, Coralee Milner Bray, died on March 1, 1991…….twenty years ago today. Twenty years! I have lived one third of my life without my mother and am now a few months older than she was when she succumbed to breast cancer at age 60.

Although we lived nearby and saw each other all the time, we weren’t particularly close. I’m sorry about that, but she was not an easy woman to really get to know. In hindsight I’m sure I could have done more to try to improve that, but I didn’t. Our relationship was what it was…..I can’t change that now.

My daughter-in-law, Allison, loaned me a book years ago written by Mitch Albom called “For One More Day”. It is the story of a man whose mother died many years before but he is given a chance to spend one more day with her. I’ve often wished I could have that “one more day” with my own mother.

If I could, what would I say to her? I would say that I always admired her spunk and her can do attitude. My sister, Karen, says that she was “a woman with balls”…..and that is a completely accurate description. I would like to tell her that I admired that in her. Back in the 1950s, she and a neighbor woman (my friend, Deb’s mother), tore out a wall in the house and replaced the small single door closet with double sliding closet doors…..all by themselves with no help from a man!

If we wanted horse jumps, my mother built horse jumps. When we needed a donkey for the Christmas play at school (back when you could still mention Christmas in school), my mother made a donkey out of a sawhorse, cloth and stuffing among other things. Soon after undergoing a lumpectomy, she was out back with a power saw helping Darrin make a model railroad layout. My mother was a very capable woman.

I would tell her that I remember being a young teenager and thinking I can’t wait to grow up and be in total control, never afraid, always taking charge just like my mother. She always gave me the impression that she was never afraid and I wanted that confidence. Well, I’m still waiting to feel that way. Apparently she was a great actress, too.

I would make sure she knew that I was proud of all the things she learned with minimal or no instruction….sewing, leatherwork, dog grooming, tennis, golf….and she was good at all of them. My mother was extremely competitive and hated losing or doing a lousy job.

My mom's high school graduation photo, about a year before I was born

I would tell her that I know she did the best she could with what she knew. She had a lot of old demons that she never shared with us. She was only 19 when I was born and in many ways her parenting skills were lacking. But I want to focus on the positive things rather than the negative ones. While she was never there for us emotionally, she was always there physically and financially. I would like to thank her for that.

Karen and I have discussed at length that somehow she instilled great self esteem in us. For that I am forever grateful to her. By taking the things she did that didn’t work and changing them when I became a parent, I learned indirectly how to better raise Darrin.

I would point out to her that she mellowed into a wonderful grandmother. Once Darrin was born, he became the apple of her eye. She spent countless hours with him and was always available to babysit. Darrin was not quite 15 when she died and he has great memories of his time spent with her.

My mom and Darrin - please excuse the poor quality, this was before Photoshop

I would make sure that she knew my best memory of her came about five or six years before she died. My parents would rent homes on the northern California coast a couple times a year and invite us all up for a weekend. One such weekend in Sea Ranch was cold and drizzling. The guys, my dad, my ex-husband and Darrin, all headed off to play golf. Karen and her husband couldn’t make it that weekend.

My mother and I took the dog out for a walk. We discovered a sheltered trail along the ridge through the trees that meandered for a mile or two and couldn’t wait to share it with the rest of the family. Cold and wet, we returned to the house and jumped in the hot tub with a bottle of wine….or two. We were in there for hours and turned into complete prunes!

The next day we shared our hike with the guys. Every year after that we would walk our trail at least once with the whole family. My mother’s ashes are scattered along that trail on the ridgeline and my father wants his there, too, when the time comes.

But most of all, I would like to spend one more day with my mother just to talk. Now that I’m twenty years older and my life has totally changed since I was forty, I think we would have a lot better understanding of each other.

Her dogs were the love of her life and she was in her element at dog shows. She had a thriving small business grooming poodles in her garage. I would often stop by in the morning after dropping Darrin off at school. I’d sit on the steps with a cup of coffee while she clipped the dogs and we would visit. It was always superficial talk but we did connect much better as adults.

My mom and Faira - not the best photo, my dad has all the good ones

Finally, I would like to tell her that I will forever be sorry that I wasn’t with her when she died. It had been a long day and the hospital had transferred her to a skilled nursing facility after a 35 day ICU and hospital stay. Her condition was such that we couldn’t care for her at home and knew her days were extremely limited. That same evening, we had all stayed until about 9 PM. She was not able to converse but I’m sure she knew we were there. About 9:30 PM my dad got the phone call that she was gone.

I’ve always wished I was there with her holding her hand. But I also believe that she probably wanted it that way and waited until we were gone. I’d be willing to bet a lot of money that if I were given that chance for “one more day”, she would shake her head and say, “Why are you wasting so much time thinking about all of this? I’m fine. Go live your life!”  And she just might add with a smile, “You always thought I was the difficult one, look what your father has put you through!”

Rest in peace, Mom.  I love you.