Happy Birthday

I don’t think that I have very many regrets in life. Oh, sure there are paths not taken that are filled with “what ifs” and “could have dones”, but I believe that all of my choices have led me to where I am today. It is a place that I am very happy to be in and I feel pretty comfortable in my skin. There is a little too much skin, but I am working on that. No, really, I am!


Thirty-one years ago today I was blessed with two of the most wonderful children that have graced the face of the planet. I may be a little biased and in fact I am now and have always been in love with them since moments after their birth. When I was sitting in the rocking chair in my gown and mask when the nurses placed the two tiny bundles of concentrated cute into my arms. One was a girl and the other a boy. Maegan has used the fact that she is the older of the two to get a certain amount of respect over the years. Well, she has tried but Brendan wasn’t having any of that. I honestly don’t know for sure who was first, but why would the nurses lie? 


I will admit that they were a lot of work for the first little while, since we were using cloth diapers and I would come home to a stack of them that were rinsed but not scrubbed.  It wasn’t long before they were each other’s best friend. For some reason that we could never figure out, they called each other “Be-be”. They had a private language, which I suppose is a twin thing, and the only one that could understand it was Arwen who would translate for us. 


You know, when I think back, it is amazing that I didn’t hug the life out of them. 


Over the years they have become just wonderful human beings. I will often be sitting in this empty old house and wish that it were filled with laughter, yelling, running and playing children once again. Perhaps that is one of the reasons I love the grandkids so much, they remind me of times gone by and this time perhaps I can spend a little more time to focus on what the little ones find important. The rooms in this house are still known to me by which one of the kids lived in it. I can still see marks in the walls and the odd time I will find something or theirs that has remained hidden for all of these years. 


Louise took a lot of pictures over the years and we have thousands of pictures of them growing up. I guess I should get them all organized and see if they want to take a good selection for their own. I still have a lot of things that they made when they were growing up. I have a large selection of clay globs that look something like animals/ashtrays/unworldly gizmos in all different colours, with their names scratched on the bottom. I have several boxes of school work and construction paper hearts or Santas that I kept just in case they became great artists. The damned things could be worth a fortune. I am going to keep Brendan’s early writings for when he writes the great Canadian novel. Maegan’s blog ( www.lazysundaes.com ) is well written and I’m keeping her stuff in case she goes viral. Every now and then I will see if they want any of this stuff and there has been a universal lack of enthusiasm. I vow that I will toss it out, but when push comes to shove, I can’t bear to part with it. They can toss it when they are cleaning the house after I die.


I don’t tell them often enough just how proud I am of the people they have become. They are well loved and pretty much everyone that knows them are better people for knowing them. Maegan and Brendan still have a bond that binds them together no matter how far apart they are. I can’t imagine how hollow my life would have been without kids. I wish I could have done more for them over the years and given them all of the best things that life has to offer, but I did my best, and that is all that you can do.


HAPPY BIRTHDAY MAEGAN!!!!


HAPPY BIRTHDAY BRENDAN!!!!