Birthdays!!

     I am celebrating my 42nd birthday today!  I am feeling older, but not that old!  I have always liked celebrating anything, birthdays included.  I have always wondered though, why we don't really celebrate the mother of the person who was birthed??  For, the mother is the one who made it all possible.  In my case, my mother was young, alone in the delivery room, scared, yet very excited to meet me.  I really was a wrinkled, smooshed, pasty infant, (luckily my looks improved), but my mother says I was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen; and she named me Heather.  This Gaelic name of our heritage, was in fact perfect for me, and she decided on it against the wishes of others.  She also decided to breast-feed me.  This was not popular during that time, all her older sisters were against it, as well as all the nurses at the hospital, save one.  Fortunately, this older nurse helped my mother, and encouraged her.  I have kept this in my mind throughout my years of nursing, because mothers do know best!!  The birthing is only the beginning of what mothers do for their children.  I love her so much, and appreciate all she has done for me.  I am so thankful to have more and more interests to talk about with my mom as the years go by.  She is just as weird as me, or am I as weird as her? So today as I look out the window at the falling snow, munch on mini-cupcakes, and reflect on what fun I will conjure up for my next 42 years; I salute the one who made it all possible, my MOM!!

My mom and I at the Tower of London, on her 60th birthday!