May is my favoritest (yes, a word I made up😊) month of the year. Not only because trees are dressing themselves in leaves, and tulips and crocuses are budding various colors lost in winter’s snow.
May 6th, my second daughter, Megan was born beautifully healthy, naturally. A miracle. Yet May 4th is uniquely special, the birthday of my dad, who demonstrated love for me all growing up, when he was not obligated to. I am not his biological daughter, yet he signed my birth certificate, while loving my mother who birthed me unwanted, a child of rape. Can it be a celebration of my birth, as I know and feel I am meant to be here…greatly due to my dad’s attentive love, whose weekly letters during college and early marriage are documented tributes of his devotion.
Although an astronomer, research associate at Cornell University, dad wrote intimately about his feelings regarding his family, his work, his love of nature, his religion, his troubles. His gratitude. For a few months I have been writing Our Love Story, its foundation drawn from over 100 of his letters and cards.
On May 14th, we celebrate my third granddaughter’s birthday, who just turned 21, legal to drink and willing to follow my lead dancing salsa, which is new to her. She follows amazingly well; but more importantly I follow her attention to last summer’s visit (2024), where she observes a photograph of dad’s (her great-grandfather) chest being open, holding his arms behind his back, standing next to his adult nephew, whose arms are folded across his chest. Closed.
This year 2025, Emily is the only one of her family who notices a necklace I am wearing: Best eye water reads one side, Compassion written on the other side. My oldest daughter, Erin, picked it out at an artist festival as a present for me, years ago. It celebrates tears as do mine while attending my fourth husband’s memorial, May 19th, at the home of his present partner, Karen, along with his three siblings, whom I have not been in contact with since I left Gregory in 1998. With open arms.
Gregory is the husband whose distrust triggered me deeply, becoming the catalyst for me to heal little Dianea, unloved by her mother, missing her dad, soon to become a primal Marriage and Family Therapist still seeing clients at age 78.
I am a reflection of my dad’s volunteering for Suicide and Crisis Service during the 1970s. A rarity for a man back then. It’s as if he is a bright cloud holding me, floating me, as I ecstatically and greatfully celebrate!