Celebrating a wonderful 'smilestone'
Jan. 10 is a significant date in my and Terry's life.
It is the day we met our first child face-to-face. She was born at 9:52 p.m. — a forceps delivery that would have been a C-section in today's obstetrics practice. We named her Tamara Christine, for no reason other than I thought that was such a beautiful, flowing name.
Terry's first amateur dad question was, “What color eyes does she have?” Nothing that can be discerned in the birth moment. With his hazel and my brown, they could have become just about anything. As it turned out, they grew to be blue.
I needed some medical care after, and my mother, who was a registered nurse, came to help out. My dad, a first-time grandfather, sent us a bouquet of flowers, with a card I keep on the fridge to this day: “To the ladies of my life, Chuck, dad, and grandpa.”
The significance of all this in 2024 is it happened 50 years ago. My own words leap forward in time to laugh in my face. In celebrating Terry's cousin's birthday at his lake home on an Alaskan August afternoon in the 1990s — I was in my early 40s — asked his mother in a state of wonderment, “How does it feel to have a kid who is 50?”
I remember she shrugged, and more and less said, “Well, what can you do about it?”
It was shocking to me to think of — not being fifty yet myself. Now here I am on a January winter's day in Idaho, hearing that echo hoot: “How does it feel to have a kid who is 50?”
My answer to that is it feels like an accomplishment. She is now a hard-working mother of nine — four of whom are still at home, the youngest just 7. She graduated from Whitworth University in Spokane, back when it was Whitworth College. Her history and special education degree generally fell by the wayside as she raised her big family.
She endured Alaska's Arctic subzero isolation, living where her husband's work took him. And now is packing up on practically a moment's notice to move from Spokane to his new job in Kentucky. I'm not sure she's going to love those humid summers. But she does what needs to be done.
Terry and I did not know 50 years ago her eye color and a whole lot of other. Time unfolds, and time reveals.
Yes, time has done its number on us. Yet it has also given us its gift. Our firstborn — three more were to follow in quick order — has reached a milestone, or a “smilestone,” as I like to say. Tamara is one of the most thoughtful, dedicated persons you'll meet. She has enriched this world and has been a giver, not a taker.
She's made it sweeter, too, with her extraordinary candy-making abilities.
How does it feel to have a kid who is 50? Now that I've arrived in this unimaginable place that day beside the lake in Alaska I can say, “It feels like it should, pretty darn good.”