Birthday Thoughts

My birthday is in two days. I will be 65 years old! Wow!

I am both grateful and amazed to have made it to this milestone. I never thought I would reach age 30 — I almost didn’t, but I managed to do just that and become an amazing woman — if I do say so myself — who has seen and learned so much as mother of one and grandmother of two of my biggest blessings.

At age 25, I was going through a divorce, my daughter was about four or five months old. I ended up receiving welfare benefits and living with my parents and my baby girl in my old bedroom.

When my daughter was six months old, I took an off-the-books job as a secretary at a law office in the Bronx. I saved every penny I earned at that job so that I could pay someone under the table for a two bedroom apartment at a subsidized housing development in East Harlem, NY. Before I could move in and two weeks into this off-the-books job, a robber calmly walked into the office and asked to speak to an attorney, saying he needed representation for a weapons charge he was facing. After going through the motions of explaining his situation to said attorney, the man was escorted to the front door. At the door, this potential client quickly turned around, gun in hand and directed two attorneys and myself to the ground in the conference room and promptly relieved us of cash and jewelry before leaving us helplessly gagged and tied. Six months later, I took a job as a secretary at ITT Corp. (long before its divestiture) where I made life long friends.

Recently while chatting on the phone with one of those friends, (I mentioned her here), we got to talking about her upcoming retirement and all the technological advances we’ve seen throughout the 35+ yearlong life of our friendship.

We recalled how my then little girl used to ask the most insulting questions, like:

“Mom, were you alive when dinosaurs lived on Earth?” and “Mom, did you know astronauts landed on the moon?” and “Mom, what about televisions? Did you have one growing up?”

Except for the dinosaur question (ugh!), I always answered with a loving “Yes, baby girl.”

Regarding our first television set, I didn’t tell her only three channels were available and that programming ended late at night leaving only a snowy, static-y screen. I also didn’t tell her I was old enough to remember when the first Spanish language station (WNJU-TV) went live, or that the first widely available cable boxes…

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