Happy Birthday Erva!

We've waited a long time for this one.

For Dad

Happy Birthday Dad, here where you are...
in my heart, in Erva's heart, in Mom's heart.

Today in History

Today is my birthday, which should be history enough...yet I just have to add these few little odd bits of information; things that supposedly also happened on the 28th.

Although I have not be able to find out any info on this important moment, in 1820 the tomato was supposedly proved nonpoisonous.

The tomato is native to South America but it appears the Aztecs were the first to actually cultivated it. We even get the name tomato from them, "tomatl." A member of the nightshade family, it is related to potato, eggplant, tobacco, chili peppers and the poisonous (and hallucinogenic) belladonna. It was probably Cortez who brought the tomato to Spain and the Mediterranean. It was being cultivated there by 1540, and by 1692 turned up in recipes. With Spain's expansion into the world the tomato made it's way into Asia. With all that evidence of being edible you'd think the English and other Europeans would have gotten that it wasn't poisonous. Sometimes those Europeans are kind of slow. It was actually being cultivated in England by the 1590s but, because of it's family background, was only used for decorative purposes. However by the mid 1700s even the British had taken to eating tomatoes. Thomas Jefferson grew them after the Revolution and they showed up in New Orleans around 1812. But it was probably the arrival of Italians into the U. S. that put the tomato on the map, returning it to it's native hemisphere after several hundred years wandering the world. Only then did it find a lasting and endearing place in North American cuisine. Did you know the leaves of the tomato are poisonous?

In 1838 Queen Victoria was crowned.

In 1939 Pan Am (how many of you remember Pan Am or actually flew Pan Am? I do and did) opened a transatlantic route. On an interesting side note, Charles Lindbergh flew around the Caribbean and Latin America in 1927. He landed in Puerto Rico. My mother, age 10, was taken by her father to the place he landed and she got to see his plane. I don't think she got to see him. Lindbergh also landed on St. Thomas. In fact the place he landed is where the airport is and the beach next to it is called Lindbergh Beach.

In 1967 George Harrison was fined for speeding. Such a wild and crazy guy.

Other people who were born on this day include, Henry VIII, Mel Brooks, Gilda Radner and John Cusack (such a cutie.)

Happy Birthday to us.

A Pictoral Tribute to Mom

She was born on this day in 1917.

Here she is at about 6 months.

At two, she was already fearless.

At about five. Pictures of Erva and me at this age look so much like her it's spooky.

At about 13. Already an avid reader.

At about 14. Barefoot and riding a donkey.

At 15 or 16. Strong like bull...she could row for miles.

As a high school senior, beautiful, and...

heading off to Pratt Institute.

On her wedding day. Age 26.

Here she is a young married woman.

With her daughters.

In the prime of her life, enjoying every minute.

Today she is 92.

Happy Birthday Mom. We love you.

Happy Birthday Stan!

They say it's your birthday, so happy birthday to you!

Guess Who?

Yup, that’s me, just hours after I was born. I look confused and disoriented. “What the hay is going on?”

It’s my birthday today.

Actually it’s Mom’s birth day, after all she did most of the work. She always told Erva and me she remembered the days we were born as clearly as if the events happened yesterday.

My birthday story is this. Mom was prepared to have me. She’d already had one baby so she knew what to expect. When Erva was born all the people attending Mom in the delivery room were women. It was a very calm experience. When I was born all the people attending Mom in the delivery room were…men! Mom said there was a completely different attitude about how to get things done. Erva was born pretty much drug free. When it was my time to arrive, first thing Mom knew they’d given her a spinal. She said she felt like a fish flopping around on a table. Those men would tell her to push, but she couldn’t feel anything. “How could I push when I was basically paralyzed from the waist down?” she said. So, because she couldn’t push they had to use…yup…forceps. I am a forceps baby. So out I come and the doctor hands me over to the male nurse and he says, “Here’s a cute one.” And before Mom gets to see or hold me I’m handed around to all the men and goo-gooed over. If all of that wasn’t bad enough, Mom was given shots to stop the flow of milk so she couldn’t breast-feed me, something she wanted and intended to do, something that she was able to do for Erva.

Apparently I didn’t like baby bottles. By the time I was old enough to hold them I would drink what I wanted and then throw the offending object out of the crib. Now remember all baby bottles were glass back then. It seems I managed to break quite a few. Mom decided to teach me drink out of a glass to see if I liked that any better. I did. So I learned to drink out of a glass when I was pretty young.

And that’s it, the story of my birth.

Tomorrow I’m going home to the islands. I’ll be gone for two months. I don’t know when or if I’ll get the opportunity to blog anything. Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to read my meanderings. If I don’t “see” you off and on in the next two months, I’ll definitely, “see you in September.”