It's My Birthday!

Sorry I haven't posted in awhile. I have some health issues that are taking up a lot of time and energy.

As my mother would say, it's the 8th anniversary of my 29th birthday, and for the first time in my memory - we did not get any snow. Not a bit. A few flakes this morning while at a local restaurant with my mom, brothers, baby sister, and nephew for my birthday breakfast, but they melted as soon as they hit the ground.

This doesn't seem like a big deal, but for a person whose birthday is a source for running jokes about blizzards and wrecked cars - at least among family - this is kind of depressing. I was born in the middle of a blizzard after my mother went into labor 7 weeks early. At the height of the storm, I announced my intentions of arriving early. My father immediately loaded Mom up and they headed out in his Caddy. They made it maybe 500 feet before the Caddy went into a slide and then into a ditch. Dad hiked to my uncle's home a few hundred yards away. Uncle Bill immediately set out in his Jeep with Mom and Dad, but slid and hit a tree. Thankfully they were only going about 10 mph - if that. He tried again in my Aunt JoAnne's car, only to slide into a snowbank...in his own driveway. That's three cars down! All told 7 vehicles were wrecked in the attempt to get Mom to the hospital. Dad tried calling PennDOT to clear and salt the hill road, but PennDOT - apparently having heard the "My wife's in labor" excuse before - refused. I am probably the only child responsible for wrecking 7 vehicles before birth. (Dad's insurance co. paid the claims, then promptly dropped them.)

My mother was finally driven - in a 57 Chevy - to the wrong hospital, but at that point, she figured "any port in a storm". After that, Mom says, she told God, "I will have as many children as you see fit to send me, but please! No more winter babies!" Apparently God heard - my sisters have May and June birthdays, and my brothers were both born in September - 4 years and 6 days apart.

Once at the hospital, showing the stubbornness for which I'm often acclaimed, I apparently decided the horror of all those slides and accidents was too much. My mother spent 42 hours in labor. (And loves me anyway!)

Anyway, ever since then, I have had snow on my birthday. Mostly, there were blizzards (usually if I had a party planned) but there were also a couple of ice storms. In high school, people used to plan on not having school on either my birthday or Feb 1st - and they were never disappointed, except for the year the two days fell on a weekend.

I hate snow and/or cold weather for the most part, but I often tell people I like snow on two days - Christmas and my birthday. To not have snow on my birthday is kind of like God forgetting to get me a present.

And makes me believe global warming is becoming an even more serious situation than I first thought.