Happy Christmas Birthday

Christmas Eve Day has had special memories for me.  Today would have been my mother’s 90^th birthday.  Nowadays, many people live well into their 90’s. But, Ruth Lorraine Lindsay Schaub passed away twelve years ago and at least a decade before her death she lived with the glacial erosion of Alzheimer’s.

Mom made it very, very clear that her birthday and Christmas were two separate events.  As a child she was told many years, “this is a combination of your birthday and Christmas presents.”  As an adult she was not going to let that be repeated.  Neither did she appreciate pretty cards with poinsettias and holly that read, “As you celebrate your Christmas Birthday. . .” A rude, comical contemporary birthday card was always preferred.

Birthday celebrations on December 24^th always took place at breakfast time.  Mom would open her cards and presents and enjoy the attention.  Sadly, I do not remember my mother ever having a birthday cake.  She passed on the cake saying there were enough sweets in the house already.  After breakfast, it was time to prepare for Christmas dinner because living on the family farm presumed that the Christmas gathering would move to the other house on the farm after my grandmother was gone.

Shortly after we were married we began noticing signs of memory loss.  It was more than what someone in her early 60’s would experience. By the age of 69 Mom was in skilled care because of classic Alzheimer’s.  Ruth never got to really enjoy her grandchildren.  We think of the things the kids said as children and how she would have gotten a kick out of them, but she didn’t.  We think how she would have made batches and batches of cookies for her grandchildren had she been able. We think how being a consummate dog-lover she would have loved our dogs and their antics.  We think how she would have used her beautiful soprano voice to sing songs of faith or sing little ditties with her grandchildren but they never heard her voice.

I fondly remember my mother’s birthday every Christmas Eve. There was something magical about celebrating a birthday amid all the festivities of Christmas.  It is a little strange when a tradition is suddenly absent.  So, we hold on to the witticisms of Ruth; we repeat the crude jokes she loved; we raise a glass in her Memory of sweet white wine that she tippled; we have a cookie (or three) made from the vast repository of her cookie recipes; and we try to remember that those with Christmas-time birthdays have two separate events.