Birthday

The Greatest Gift

Posted on by Lauren

“You need to tell her. You need to get into your car right now, go over there and tell her.” my husband encouraged. 

It was the eve of my birthday. We were on our front porch and I had just read aloud a letter I’d found while cleaning out my father’s condo. Apparently, he had kept a file for each of his children. In mine I found every report card, parent/teacher conference record and a collection of letters. 

What a treasure trove of memories this was for me to dive deeply into. 

But the one dated December 11, 1987 left me breathless.

If you’ve followed my blog, then you know the story of my beginning. I am the illegitimate love- child of a long-term affair. My parents worked together but no one suspected, not even after I was born. My older sisters, who also worked with my parents, knew me as “Pam’s daughter” but did not learn I was their half-sister until I was three. 

My mother was a powerful business woman. She was charismatic, magnetic, and inspiring. She meant much to many across the entire country but it was me, who wanted her attention the most. 

I spent so many years of my life resentful and angry for the time she’d spent building her career in place of a closer relationship with me. Now that I have a daughter very similar to me, when I was a child, I understand how challenging it must have been to forge that relationship. I didn’t make it easy. 

I finished this letter and instantaneously, my anger evaporated leaving nothing but remorse in its wake. 

I desperately wanted to call her and tell her how sorry I was for failing to recognize the love she had held for me my entire life. I was so busy focusing on her shortcomings that, as a result, I completely missed her devotion and steadfast love. 

My mother advocated for me. She encouraged my father to maintain a relationship with me not just in this letter but in other letters I found in the file: inviting him to conferences, recording my thoughts to him pen-to-paper when I could not yet write. 

How could I ever thank her enough for that gift? The gift of the presence of my father? 

What if I had found this after her death and had never apologized? 

What if my father hadn’t kept these letters for me to one day find?

But he did and she’s still here and my husband willed me to go to her. 

I couldn’t get a hold of her until the next day but when she answered, I started by telling her how much I loved her followed immediately by how sorry I was for remaining angry with her for so long. I thanked her for loving me anyway, in spite of my anger. For never giving up on me. Not then and not now. 

It was my birthday. 

And it was the greatest gift I’ve ever received. 

Love, forgiveness, and gratitude. 

40

Posted on by Lauren

I started and stopped. 

Some things are just too complicated to try and explain. 

But he looked at me and said, “Talk to me.” 

So, I told him. 

I explained how I had spent a lifetime trying to make sense of who I am today, based on my upbringing. 

I grew up dead-center-middle of a fractured family and as a result, I had built a life of trying to prove myself.  

I did this by being whatever the other person needed me to be. 

In other words, I had never found myself because I was too busy trying to be what anyone else needed. 

And this carried on through adulthood. Through friendships.  Through motherhood.  Through marriage. 

Oh, how easy it is to get lost in being whatever your children need.  Why else would there be an “empty nest syndrome”? 

But it was the marriage that had me, at the current moment. 

“What do you love about me?” I point-blank asked him. “Aside from the fact that we have similar interests and I don’t complain about you fishing . . . “

I asked him not to respond right away because I wanted a genuine answer. 

Do you love me because I am who you need me to be?

Or do you love me because of who I am?

In other words, do you see me?

Even when I can’t?

I’m soon celebrating the Eve of 40- an age I cannot *wait* to reach because finally, you just don’t give a damn anymore.  

And I. am. so. ready. 

To stop trying and to start just being. 

Camille Vaughan Photography

Lucky

Posted on by Lauren

Here’s a funny thing about being a piano player. 

Whenever you rest your hands, they are perpetually “in position”. 

I started to play when I was three, got my first piano at nine years old and still play to this day, as do my four daughters. 

I’ll never forget the moment I asked my piano teacher, Ms. Brooks, “How did you get those veins?”. 

She laughed but the truth was, I wanted those veins.  I wanted those wrinkles.  

They represented age and experience, two things I, the youngest of eight children, yearned for. 

This weekend I will turn 38 years young. 

I look down at my hands and notice the telltale signs of aging and honest-to-God, I feel so lucky.

I’ve lived this many years and if I’m lucky enough, I’ll live just as many more!

To me, wrinkles are beautiful and should be worn as a badge of honor. 

Not everyone is so lucky. 

And at 38, more than anything else, that is what I feel: lucky. 

How did she get those wrinkles?

By living that long. 

If only we could all be so lucky.