It’s May again, my favorite month. Filled with birthdays, spring flowers blooming, cornfields awash in new life, turning the countryside in our state a most delicious green.

May is also my least favorite month. Filled with wrenching separations, fading lilac blossoms and tulip petals blowing in the wind, not to be seen for 12 more long months.

May, for me, is a tangled mess of memories.
Some of them very good.
Some of them very, very bad.
Some of them lovely enough to take my breath away.

The good…

The good memories are so very good.

May 11, my father’s birthday, was a day of celebration and rejoicing at our house. Dad acted like a kid on every birthday, demanding the biggest piece of cake and an extra scoop of ice cream. Oohing and aahing over the same presents we gave him every year–Aqua Velva aftershave and Kentucky Club pipe tobacco–as if they were the most marvelous gifts in the world. Dad had a way of making his children feel very, very good.

Our son, our firstborn child, came into this world on May 23, 1982. I can still close my eyes and see his tiny perfection the first time I held him. A head full of dark hair, a head round as a pumpkin, wide-set eyes, a long upper lip just like my father’s, his rosebud mouth, and his daddy’s jawline and chin. I can see my husband’s smiling face and feel the joy we shared was good. So very good.

To read the rest of this post, visit the Not Alone blog at specialneedsparenting.net.

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