Today is my birthday. I have always been curious as to why we celebrate the person who was born instead of the one who gave them life in the first place, our Mothers.

No slight intended to Dads, but there is no other human experience that can equal the miracle of a mother giving birth to her child. It really is amazing when you ponder the wonder of it all.

Yet we celebrate the child, ourselves, on birthdays when the real star of the show should be our mothers.  The women who protected us in their womb for almost a year. We were comfortably cocooned in a place of blood and bone, tissue and fluid, all conspiring to knit us together into a sentient being.  It really is a work of the highest art!

But we claim that day as our own, as if coming into the world was somehow of our making. It seems a lack of recognition that we were only given the gift of life thanks to our mothers. But yet we are the ones to receive all the joy!

It is not this birthday but most that make me wonder about why I was conceived and all the details about the day I was born. I have been unsuccessful at getting much detail from my mother on that topic most of my life.

I remember one day in high school, after doing the math (counting back 9 months) and recognizing I could have been the result of a New Year’s Eve celebration. 

Always one to ask the inappropriate question, I put that one to my Mother. She looked at me with a start and said, “That is a rude question and none of your business!” Taking a different tact I apoligized and then asked her, “Ok but was I planned?” Answering like a good converted Catholic should, she looked at me and said, “Nobody plans to have kids, they just show up when they feel like it!”

That answer is funny to me now but at the time it was highly unsatisfactory. All the fuss and celebration that goes into our birthdays made me think I should have been part of some grander plan. 

But on this morning of the anniversary of my birth, I looked over at my Mother wondering should I even mention to her that we had occasion to celebrate? I was too young to remember that day and now she is too old to do the same. It always makes me a bit sad. No more cakes made by her hand, no beautiful cards and loving wishes. 

But then I remember to be thankful I get to have her here with me at all on our special day. I remind myself to be forever grateful that the first gift she gave me on my birthday is still with me to this day…the gift of life! That makes it a very happy birthday indeed!