34 Years

That's right folks, thirtyfour years ago my completely unmedicated mom (she hates needles) pushed out her second daughter. This new baby entered life as a porky affair with coal-black hair parted neatly down the middle. She had a blue line on the bridge of her nose shaped exactly like the number four. (If you look closely enough to this day, you can still see it.) Her mom brought her to the home of her grandparents (the house next door to me now), where they were living while her newly-graduated father awaited orders for his first assignment in the Air Force.

This little fire cracker learned to talk in the deep south, and said goodbye and "Bah, bah!" Crayons were "crowns". She was home schooled for part of kindergarten because the schools there worked on a lottery system and it wasn't her (un)lucky day. She craved adult conversation and had her own visiting teaching route at the age of four. She would ring the door bell, enter, sit on the couch and ask, "So, how are you feeling? How are your children?".

She had an overwhelming thirst to learn. She used to sit in her little rocking chair poring over Mormon Doctrine willing the characters to make sense. She moved and moved until she was in North Dakota and lived a block from school. She was chronically late. She was also chronically in trouble. Her mom had to escort her home one day for bringing her hamster to school in her bag. She was a sassy little thing that thought she knew everything. Her father was called upon to sit with her in Sunday school more than once.

She grew and grew and by the seventh grade looked exactly as she does now. She was more boy crazy than should be allowed by law. She lived on an historic military base and was only kept from trouble by her excessively tender conscience. She lost her sister at the age of twelve and it changed her life. She moved again and learned a lot from loneliness. She settled in and learned that to make friends, you just need to look around you to see that people are as lonely as you are.

After graduating, she went off to school and had to find out who she really was, and what she was worth. She came home and fell in love with a handsome prince that convinced her she was worth even more than that. They got married and then she was pregnant for the rest of her natural life. This sent her so far 'round the twist that she's never came back and doesn't regret it for a second. She says it's way more fun 'round the twist. Those 34 years have had a lot of living, and that's definitely worth celebrating!