December 12th, 12 days of Christmas and others 12’s of December are often mistaken for that beautiful epiphany which takes place in January with wise old kings and gifts. In our family, the 12th of December is marked on our calendar as a day of celebrating a pair of beautiful women. One is my SIL and the other my bestie since birth (some time ago, but not quite ancient…).
On December 12th, our family celebrates Kim and Pam. Both women are pretty amazing. For instance, Kim doesn’t talk about it much, but she served our country. It isn’t something she flaunts or uses to command respect. It simply IS something she did for which her nephews thank her and her FIL salutes her every November when his Barbershop Chorus sings The Armed Forces Medley. As the song moves through the various branches of our military, Kim quietly waits and then rises with the dignity of a soldier to receive a small flag in token of her service during the Air Force Anthem. She sits back down quietly after her song is sung and then moves about her life as if she hadn’t really done anything special. I admire that. While the military life was no picnic, it was pretty good training for the hard-won fight of motherhood. Little Jackson T. is the light of her life and she and my brother have the business of parenting down pat. While I could name a whole bunch of other things I admire about my SIL, my favorite (next to my nephew) would be her Christmas Eve baked ziti-no contest. Now that I HAVE mentioned it, there are just a few days to go before we get to indulge in that tasty delight. What better reason to celebrate the 12th than to count down to ziti night?
The 12th also marks the birth date of the longest relationship I have had to date. Well, that sounds strange, but we shared a crib, a bathtub, a play pen and probably a crusty zwieback cracker or two along the way. Pam and I were born just 6 months apart to four college students in Terre Haute, Indiana. Her mom and dad and my mom and dad managed to pool enough money together on Friday or Saturday nights to crack a bottle of wine and boil some pasta together. We spent lots of time together over the years…sometimes over pasta and later…over wine of our own.
We actually maintained our friendship over 46 years through letters, and occasional long-distance phone calls (if we were lucky!), summer family vacations to theme parks, the 1982 World’s Fair and to a dude ranch in Colorado. Many of our best memories came from our 1986 summer. We returned to the dude ranch at which our families had vacationed and worked for the summer. Long’s Peak Inn in Estes Park was our home for a summer. More specifically, a cabin named Tin Lizzy housed the two of us, a British exchange student named Carrie and a crazy Florida Gator named Janeen. What a summer-think Dirty Dancing Heads to the Rockies….
Being a Notre Dame grad (Catholic like me…) made Pam the clear choice for Godmothering my two boys. Being a Notre Dame grad also made her a more amazing person. Besides being incredibly well-read, beyond-words intelligent and a trusted confidant, Pam has a heart shinier than the gold dome on campus. She spends her days, working with the residents of a nursing home. Their stories are varied, but she loves them all. Sometimes, she reminds me of my favorite aunt, Sharon Ann. Sharon worked at a state mental hospital for many years and the stories she told were always tempered with affection for people in the hospital. Pam reminds me of Sharon in the way she talks about “her” residents and in a variety of other ways. A giving heart, beautiful eyes and a shopping wild-woman, Pam’s birthday is always worth celebrating…perhaps with a bag of peanut M&M’s divided by color and formed into a rainbow along with a bottle of blush wine…but, while that would be following our in our parents’ footsteps…it is quite another story.
Happy Birthday Girls! Love you both!
FreelanceBeth 