Today is the longest day of the year, although it has twenty-four hours in it like every other day in the calendar. The issue is that today is the day on which the sun shines the longest.
My Mother reveled in this, since today was also her birthday; and — while I haven’t checked — I suspect I write something about her every June 21. She would have been ninety today.
However, she died twelve years ago a couple months shy of her seventy-eighth birthday. It’s been long enough that I’ve settled her estate and absorbed her legacy into my own. It’s been long enough that she rarely comes up in conversation . . . except around now.
We were never particularly simpatico. She was an early morning person; I adored the nighttime. She never let anyone see her cry; I wear my heart on my sleeve. I once described her as heavily starched and myself as wash-and-wear.
Yet, we both did our best. And I remember this every June 21 by recalling that she thought her birthday and mine (two weeks earlier) were special, that she loved that hers was extra “long,” that she gave her best in every situation whether it was birthday related or not. I may not have had an intense emotional attachment to my Mother, but I certainly admired her and wish her Happy Birthday.
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