It’s your birthday again. You start it of at midnight, in the pub, with your friends. After all you are an adult now.

You can do whatever you want, without asking permission or approval from us. You could rob a bank, or buy a yacht and disappear on the horizon forever, or move to Timbuktu, or start a harem of gorgeous dark-haired and brown-eyed women all madly in love with you. You could even marry a princess and make blue-blooded babies, built a weapon of mass destruction, invent a cure for cancer, establish world peace, prevent the Martians from attacking, be a stand-up comedian (oh wait, you already are!), cut of your ear and paint sunflowers with it, and write some new best-selling novels on wizards or werewolves.

You can do all of that without our help or guidance….

In December 1990, being already very much pregnant with you, I was admitted to the hospital with a double pneumonia and, at that stage, was only suspecting your presence. The long specialist wanted to give me tetracycline, to beat the pneumonia quickly, so I would be back on my feet in no time. I protested and told her that I might be expecting as I had missed a period after my recent miscarriage, 5 weeks earlier. She laughed and told me that was as good as impossible so soon after a miscarriage. As I persisted in refusing all medication, telling her that I was the one of us that DID have sex and she had to do something or I would simply die on her, she agreed to a blood test after all. And there was the proof. HCG hormones all over the place, very, very pregnant. Medication was considered that would not do my baby harm, and I was so happy that I had been able to protect you already!

We hope the path we have drawn for you, and the sea we sailed together with you, was the right one so far. We hope you will continue to be the fine, empathic and really funny young man you have developed into. We wish for your dreams to come true, for your happiness to grow consistently, and for your love to spread around your world. We don’t expect you to do great wide scaled things like Gandhi or great, but narrower scaled meaningful things like Majoor Bosschardt. But we expect you to be great in being you, which is more than enough to make a difference. Please make the right decisions for yourself, but always bare others in mind with everything you do. You go ahead, sail your own sea, fly your own flight!! Whatever choices you make, we are so very proud of you!!

Oh, and if you rob that bank, I promise you we won’t tell anyone, if you buy us a little farm on top of a cliff in Ireland.

Mom.

Did you ever play when you were kids? When a VW Beetle would pass by you could punch your seatmate in the arm or the leg and shout “Punch Buggy no Punch Backs!” The no punch backs part was important because without those protective words you could get a punch back for the same car!

The rules and names of the game are variable, I’ve read that other people call the game “Slug Bug”, colour and year of the car are factored in as is the unique double punch some people claim for a convertible.

Barry and I started playing Punch Buggy recently, it is not something that he grew up with and he was surprised the day I punched him in the arm and yelled in his ear, filled with glee because I saw it first!  So now, we play, we have our own unique set of rules which include not being able to use a neighbourhood bug parked near our house which never moves and is no longer fair game. We shout the colour of the car, “Orange Punch Buggy No Punch Backs”. No punching on new beetles, only vintage cars.  Iphone photos sent in an email are acceptable, however, the satisfaction of the punch doesn’t happen so it is best to take the photo, save it and spring it on your unsuspecting partner by inviting them to “see this great picture I took today!”

This morning on our drive to work in our Volkswagen Golf, I discovered that my husband has been looking at vintage VW Beetles on Ebay. Our game playing has led to a new fascination and the fantasy that maybe it would be fun to own one.

We are remembering VW’s that existed in our youth, his memory is of one that the windows had to stay down a crack in the winter or you had to scrape the ice off the inside of the windshield.  I was remembering the distinctive smell of the White Knight, my brother-in-law’s VW the one with the door that had to be held closed with a bungee cord.   There was a movie too, wasn’t there?  The Love Bug?  I think I may have seen that at a drive-in theatre.

Volkswagen Bugs, Drive-in Theatres, games played on long car drives – as the days of summer grow shorter, these distinctive memories make me treasure these times so much more.

It’s back to school time, a time for finding the rhythm of a new season, it’s also a time to remember to play a bit, go back in time and find the pleasure of things remembered.

XO

Kath
(photo credit to my sister, Margie – thx!)

Mama exhorted her children at every opportunity to “jump at the Sun.” We might not land on the sun, but at least we would get off the ground.   ~~ Zora Neale Hurston