There I was sitting next to my husband of 30 plus years and across from my husband of three years over 35 years ago. We were celebrating our son’s 40th birthday at Bocci's in San Francisco's North Beach. Families make the everyday meandering of life into something special. Complicated, but special.
Having a child who is 40 makes the moniker “mature” even outdated. And he has a daughter who will be 16 soon—looking every bit her age and more. A child of San Francisco, she comes equipped with all the accoutrements of her generation—wanting to look different from everyone else and actually looking the same as everyone else. Looks aside, she’s just exactly like any other teenage girl I’ve known and was. The one distinctive feature, of course, is that she’s my son’s daughter, which makes her more special than any other teenager. Energetic, thoughtful, creative, kind.
Birthdays mark the passage of years, of course. For mothers, however, birthdays forever transport us back to the moment when a baby takes his first breath in our presence. The memory never fades. The feeling never wanes. It is a special memory—shared with others, but not felt as others feel it. What a miracle is birth!
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