It's a Girl

And so…on a day with possibly the same temperature and variation of sun and shade as today…(only slightly warmer and a tad less windy, but also relatively bug-free and with absolutely no humidity in sight)…on the twelfth of April…in a year long ago, (and yet, not so long ago as to make me old…for I am anything but.)…I was born.

(Insert gentle, polite applause here.)

And the sun shone just slightly brighter than it had in days past….

And the birds sang their sweetest song….

For born unto this twelfth day of April was a baby girl blessed with the greatest of gifts…and as her exhausted mother held her close in her arms…face still glistening from the sweat of many hours of labor…this new mother gazed into the sweetest brown eyes she’d ever seen and said, “I shall call you Kathryn. And not the traditional ‘Catherine’ either…we’ll go with something spiffy and just a tad unique…you shall be ‘Kathy with a K’…and we’ll make it ‘r-y-n’, just because…well, because I said so, that’s why...and sure…you’ll have to correct people a lot and will probably always have to spell it for them, but you’re getting ‘Marino’…and just about anyone can get that right on the first or second time.”

“Oh, and someday…you shall blog.”

(Kathryn’s father would have looked at his wife with alarm at this utterly unfamiliar word, then would have decided that surely he’d heard her incorrectly…either that, or it was likely some form of temporary insanity as the result of many hours of hard labor… “Did she just say ‘blog’? What the hell?”)

But Mom would know….yessireebob.

And so, that little baby girl (5 lbs, 10 ounces) grew into a bigger girl, who eventually got braces and breasts (not necessarily in that order) and eventually became a wo-man…and was taught how to vacuum, balance a checkbook and how to properly fold a fitted sheet.

This wo-man went on to become a mom herself…repeating the often-heard “NO RUNNING IN THE HOUSE!” and “Well, it just didn’t get up and walk away” phrases from her own youth.

The raising of my own sons was made immeasurably easier thanks to one of my dearest friends: Susan, or “Bene” as I’ve always called her (pronounced “Bee-nie”) for reasons only she and I share. Bene was/is my very best parental barometer….my life-gauge…my reality meter-extraordinaire. She’s the one who coined the phrase “Little kids, little problems…bigger kids…” well, you see where this is going.

She’s got a few precious years of parental experience on me…as well as one more child. She doesn’t sugarcoat…she’s the queen of diplomacy…and if you’re fortunate enough to be her friend, you get to pick her brain on everything from when to potty train to finding the best caterer for your next oh-so-lovely soiree.

Bringing up Bene seems appropriate when talking about my growing up…as she’s been in my life for a good half of it…and I’m a better person because of her.

(Insert “Awwwwww” here.)

And so, off my soapbox I slowly, unsteadily climb…(careful not to break a bone… or something). I’ve had my blug-anniversary and the anniversary of my birth within a week of each other...so it’s been quite the week…much cause for celebration.

Life goes on…milestones are passed…if you’re truly blessed, there are people who insist these moments are cause for celebration, whether you like it or not. And of course, you love it…

~Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away~