Today is one of those "big" birthdays, and I beg your tolerance
for this self-indulgent post. Don’t tell me it’s “just a
number.” I know that. I say those words to myself all the time. But the number is BIG.
At my time of life, it feels really important to look at myself, see what I’ve done.
At the start of the last big decade, I was on the highway headed to Arkansas, with a daughter who was along to help bring Thanksgiving to one of the sisters. I was driving. That’s a long road, and my companion wasn't much interested in fighting rush hour in Little Rock, or the steep hills near Fayetteville, and I didn’t blame her. So I kept my hands on the steering wheel and, for a while, felt sorry for myself.
That day was actually my birthday, too, and I was just racking miles—460 of them—onto myself and my car, and the day was like any other, nothing special. It wasn’t until almost this next decade-marker that the epiphany happened: Where else would I have been—at home, watching a movie, or out buying more clothes I didn’t need, or eating an expensive but ultimately unsatisfying and soon-forgotten meal in a restaurant?
No: I was driving to one daughter’s house, with another one with me, and we were engaged in lively conversation as the miles ticked off past some pretty awesome scenery, all things considered.
And since that decade-marker, ten really well-lived years have passed.
The ancients marked the seasons with awesome monuments—Stonehenge and Chichén Itzá come to mind. We know passages were important events to them. So it’s not totally a self-centered thing for me to reflect on this day, and to tag it as significant.
I don’t often let people catch me anymore for photographs. I’m not sure what that means, but it’s probably something egotistical coming out in me. But today I’m going to put it all out there, as many of my school-year pictures as I can glean from the cardboard box that holds my photos, and a good many others that show what was important during all these years, what mattered, as I’ve come to see it now.
Starting with the earliest ones:
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| 1954 |
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| 1955 |
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| 1956 |
My sister Carol had me on her lap outside the house where we lived; then, later, Jack and I were having to share the stroller. And that's me, a cheerful little girl, handing something to a person I don't remember now, somebody not likely in this world anymore.
Now, the obligatory parade of school-year photos, minus several here and there:
There were other things going on during those years: trips to the beach (starting off young!), hangin’ with my brother and sister at home, posing for Easter photos.
More school photos, and then, college….
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| Fifth grade |
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| Sixth grade |
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| 1970 |
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| 1971 |
In fifth grade, glasses. I’d always sat near the front of the room, because of my last name, so my inability to see at distance didn’t matter much. But vision screenings were a thing that year, and I got my first pair of spectacles—cat-eye ones, of course. I didn’t hate glasses at all. For the first time in years, when I looked down, I could see individual pebbles on the ground. Before glasses, it was all just a tan blur at my feet. In 1969 I upgraded to black ovals.
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| 1972 |
John Lennon wore wire-rims in
1966. Took me until 1972 to get mine.
And, suddenly, there I was, a teacher, and I looked earnest and idealistic:
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| 1974 |
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| 1978 |
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| 1980 |
These were from my Caledonia HS years.
I had several “goals” (I actually called them that) when I was in school. One was to teach. I never thought of pursuing another career, or occupation, or profession, whatever you’d like to say. It was simply my identity for a long time...still is. Another thing I wanted from life was to be a mother. This was from 1983 before Erin was born, and, below that, 1990, when Karen was on the way. I don’t have many photos of myself when I was pregnant. I didn’t mind the “look”—I just didn’t pose.
I stayed at home for a while, doing field-trip duty and homeroom-mom chores, and eventually worked at a company where my Spanish voice was useful with the Hispanic employees. But there was just nothing like teaching. So a lot of the next photos are from the years when I was at Starkville High School.
Tip: Don’t wear black to a prom unless you want to bring the gloom and doom. It does contrast nicely against the bright gowns of the girls, though. At least THEY looked good.
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| 2017 |
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| 2017 |
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| 2016 |
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| 2016 |
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| 2011 |
I loved teaching. But in the past several years I’ve figured out what was most important to me: things like helping Karen paint her theatre set; working with Lauren on her research--getting soaked by sudden rainshowers in the process; being present for Erin's and Deanna's college graduations (all the girls' graduations, actually); trips to the mountains; whitewater rafting…
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| 2022 |
I said above: I avoid photographs. But if you’ve been doing sums, and thinking about all this talk of decade-markers, you’ll have figured out: today I am seventy years old. I decided not to hide from this. Seventy deserves courage.
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| 2016 |
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| 2018 |
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| 2022 |
Thank you all for the birthday greetings.
