"Mama, do you happen to know where my birth certificate is?" Natalie, my eldest was face-timing me, and she had that sarcastic sicky-sweet smile that said "I know what you're going to say, but please don't say it."
Organization is most certainly not my strong suit, but keeping the records of my children was actually something that I did well. It was most likely due to self-preservation; too many occasions that called for their personal documents. I didn't need my life to be any more chaotic than it already was with an ever-growing brood.
When my children started working after-school jobs, I would never let them take their social security card, without a good talking to about the importance of them returning it immediately to my file on the off-chance they were to lose it and someone stole their identity and basically the whole world could fall apart if they did not.
I can't remember exactly when my mother finally gave me my own documents, though I think it was quite a while after I was married. I sort of liked knowing that she had them. It was strangely like a bit of an unseen umbilical cord between the two of us. Something she had that I needed but only she could provide.
I told Natalie that I was almost positive that I had given her her envelope of important papers soon after she and Taylor were married. There were seven children. Seven envelopes; each one with their name hand written. Each, holding the documents of their births and progression through childhood. During those first fuzzy, sleepless post-partem days of new motherhood, filling out government paper-work is for sure the last thing anyone wants to do. It takes all the romance of sniffing your new baby's neck and breath and holding their little warm, cocooned body next to you, away. Your baby is now part of a larger institution. Nine numbers now forever attached to them.
"I'll dig through my files and boxes again; maybe I never did give it to you after all." Dreading the task before me and after exhausting every chore I could think of in our tiny cabin, I finally sat myself down in front of my filing cabinet and even pulled out my own box of childhood keepsakes.
When we downsized our home, I gave each child back their baby-boxes. I had clung to these boxes. They were the tangible, physical pieces of my children that were now starting to leave home. To leave me. Baby books marking all their firsts. Envelopes with the first lock of downy blondish-silvery hair from a first hair-cut. School certificates and awards. Artwork. Pictures that didn't quite make it into the family photo album, but are in some ways even more wonderful for the raw candidness of them. I had no room to store them and it was time to let (or rather make) them take their boxes. Time to let go.
Fingering through each hanging file, I pulled out the folder file inside. Some marked with the names of holidays, some marked "Wills", "Home Projects", "Important letters and Certificates". Maybe that one! No. None of my babies. Just my own, Bisbee, Arizona, Cochise County, August 7th 1965; along with a few special hand-written letters.
Knowing it was likely a futile task, I moved on to my own baby box. What a strange but wonderful combination of things. Ballet slippers, unfinished needle-work, kindergarten artwork, report cards, a bag of jacks and a red rubber ball, old letters from pen-pals, friends, and even an almost boy-friend. Cards, my first set of scriptures gifted to me by my grand-parents on my eighth birthday, painted rocks, arrowheads, a Lederhosen gifted to me by my world-traveling stewardess auntie, my graduation cap, my baby hair in an envelope, and pictures. So many pictures.
But like I figured, no birth certificate for Natalie or any of my babies.
A few years ago, I over-heard Taylor telling Natalie, "You're a grown woman Natalie, you need to do these certain things." Natalie's reply; classic. "Taylor, I am NOT a woman. I'm a girl!" I have to admit, I feel the same. "Woman". It's just sounds so matronly. So....well....old.
Ask anyone how old they feel. And by feel I mean in their heart. Their spirit. Most will say they still feel like their youthful selves. That, though their body may not have the strength or quickness it once did, they still feel the same as they did in their late teens early twenties. It's probably one of the most frustrating parts of aging. The mind and the body don't always see eye to eye.
I look at the pictures of my teen-aged self. I still feel like that same girl. But all these children and grandchildren tell me I'm most certainly not a girl anymore. I'm a woman.
The temperature highs are still hovering in the high teens, low twenties. Emotionally exhausted from digging through the past, I needed to stretch my legs and empty my mind. I got on the treadmill (no frozen eyelashes for me thanks). I can just go to the gym now. Just like my seventeen-year-old self, I can go anywhere and do anything I please at any time. It's wonderful and it's so weird.
After I got back from the gym, I was just sitting down to my dinner and my phone face-time rang. It was Natalie. She found her birth certificate. In a box, under the stairs. On my phone screen she looks like a teenager to me. "Well that's a huge relief honey! Make sure you put it in a filing cabinet where you know where it is!" Taylor's face appears in the screen. "Oh we have, and now we'll have three since we ordered two more copies when we couldn't fine the one." He smiles. How can he not. She's his forever teenaged girl-friend. They just happen to be married with four kids; their oldest will be a teenager this coming Summer.
I honestly don't know how that's possible, since I'm only a teenager myself.
P.S. Here is a little snack idea for those times you can't decide whether you are a teen or an adult. It hits on both levels.
Pitted dates
Fill with natural nut butter of your choice
Freeze
Dip in highest quality melted chocolate (with a little coconut oil)
Sprinkle with a little fancy schmancy salt
Re-freeze
Eat and live your best ambivalent life
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