~and they called me their own~

I love October.
Always have.  Always will.

It's my birthday month and come the 26th, I shall push onward into the decade of my 60's.  Last year as I "rounded up to the nearest 10", it was a little bit on the unnerving side.  I mean for heaven's sake, I was now 60 years old.  Forget not being a teenager dragging Main Street in Hutchinson with my friends on Saturday night.  I was no longer even in my 50's.  It was a sobering thought.

I pushed on.

As I have become older, I have gained even more respect for my parents who brought me, their 6th child out of 7, into the world that beautiful Wednesday morning in the autumn of 1955. They already had 5 hungry mouths to feed at home.  Chances are good that they really didn't need another one.  Yet because they loved each other, they chose to have me.  I was wanted by them and for that I will always be in grateful remembrance.  

I think of those two people, the parents that God chose for me, so very often.  They always come to mind in October as I prepare myself for the anniversary of the day of my birth.  It is with deep love that I recall them and the sacrifices they made so that I could "be".  

Birthdays were never done on the grand scale that parents celebrate that special occasion  for their children these days.  Things were always rather low key.  John and Lois Scott had a huge family to take care of and I'm sure it took every bit of their money to do so.  That didn't stop them from celebrating the days of their children's birth.  Mom always made a birthday cake for me and since I was born in the month of Halloween, my cake was always a pumpkin shaped one when I celebrated as a child.  She would somehow manage to magically turn that food coloring combination into jack-o-lantern orange.  She would outline the face with black licorice strings and put in however many candles I might be that year.  It was very special.  Later, when I was grown and had little children on my own, I requested a different kind of cake.  Mom had the greatest recipe for applesauce sheet cake that she found in the Capper's Weekly.  It turned into one of my very favorite ones.  She knew to never put raisins in it nor to frost it with anything.  It was great and I will always remember it in my heart.

Those days were precious.  
I just didn't know how precious they were at the time.

My parents have both died now.  I have only a few things left that my mom gave to me as birthday gifts over the years that have gone by.  Although they are of little value to anyone else, they are worth everything to me.  I shall never part with them.

I have outlived the age that my father had and in 26 more years if I am still around, I shall have surpassed the age that my mother received.  No matter how old I am, I still try to do the things that would make both of them proud of me.  I would want them to know that I didn't waste the years that I have been given.  I have put everything I had into them and tried to never look back with regret.

61 years ago this month, a little girl arrived.  Chances are good that she cried instead of sleeping all night, needed her diapers changed, was fussy, got hungry, and probably smiled a whole lot too.  I'm glad that they chose me and even more glad that they called me their own. 

Beautiful trees like this one surround the final place of rest for my folks back home in Kansas. October is the month of gorgeous trees.  I love seeing that robin's egg blue sky peek through the leaves.  If there was ever a month that I would like to give a hug to, it would be sweet October.