This daughter?

Pure delight.

I could write about her forever.

She was born in a Connecticut hospital on a gurney in the middle of the hallway being quickly rolled to the delivery room.

We didn’t quite make it!

My mom came for a visit and held her when she was only days old and sang to her.

As she sang, we heard a soft little baby sound humming along in response to her grandma’s song.

There was something magical between the two of them from that first song they sang together to the very end, holding hands while her grandma took her final breath.

Julie was easy.

She didn’t cry.

All she wanted was her bottle of milk, to be held, rocked and sang to.

I sang “Oh Julie,” one of my favorites from my teen-age time and “Hey Jude,” a Beatles biggie from the year she was born.

I sang them over and over and still today, when I hear “Hey Jude”, 

if I close my eyes, I can feel the movement of the rocker and the sweet baby in my arms.

She loved her bottles full of milk.  

My mom joked that we needed to rig up a container in her crib and teach her how to refill in the middle of the night.

She was only two years old when her twin sisters hit the scene and they stole center stage.

That’s all I had to completely devote to her was two short years.

I had a six year old, a two year old, two newborns and a husband gone somewhere in a submarine for three months.

I was far from family and help.

When I grocery shopped, I pushed the basket in front of me with my three little ones in it and I pulled a basket behind me with groceries.

If my 6 year old wasn’t in school, she helped me push.

In today’s world, twins are no biggie but 50 years ago they were an amazing sight.

There was nowhere I went with them that I wasn’t stopped numerous times so people could peek at them and ask the same questions.

Everyone fussed over them and my sweet little two-year-old sat quietly and watched, she even smiled.

 

One afternoon while going through this maneuver, a grand-motherly woman walked up to us, bent down to where Julie was sitting and said, “what a sweet little girl you are.”

Julie lit up like a Christmas tree.

She talked to Julie for maybe two minutes and never looked at the twins, not even once.

Just before  she left, she whispered to me that her daughter had twins and a little one just like Julie.  She was aware of how much attention the twins got and how the little one was almost always overlooked.

I never forgot her and the lesson she taught.

While I was busy taking care of two new babies, my sweet two-year-old  taught herself to walk.

She was barely walking when one day I found her in the bathroom sitting on the toilet with a big, pleased-with-herself smile on her face.

She’d pushed her potty chair near the toilet, climbed on and then climbed up.

That was her last diaper day.

She was an original little hippie.

With her dads baseball cap on backwards, she’d put her two chubby little fingers up in the air and with a big smile and as good as she could say it, “PEASH”, the hippie mantra of the day.

Everything about her was beyond adorable.

She was a delightful little munchkin.

How bad I wanted this kid to stay just as she was, out of this world adorable.

100% pure innocent and enjoyable.

When I found time to hold her we sang the Peter Pan song…..

“I Won’t  Grow Up, 

I Don’t Wanna Go To School, 

I’ll  Never Grow Up,  Never Grow Up, Never Grow Up,

Not Me!”

When we were done singing, we’d lock pinkies and she’d promise me she’d never grow up.

And although this beautiful child is now a grown woman, still from time to time that Peter Pan promise peeks through.

And for a few moments, I see her again with that backwards hat, her fingers up, the big smile and…..”Peash.”

When Richie, the little boy from next door asked Julie what she wanted for her third birthday, she told him she wanted a turtle.

A turtle!

On the warm, summer day of her party, Richie proudly walked over with a small turtle in a bowl and all the needed equipment.

She loved that turtle.

His name by the way, was “Turtle.”

Every afternoon Julie and Turtle would lie on the bottom of the swing set glider and take their nap.

Turtle never crawled away.

I think he really loved her.

I was sad the day I learned that turtles carried Salmionella, a nasty bacteria.

I explained to my sweet child that it was time for Turtle to swim away and find a family.

She seemed to understand.

And when we went to a nearby pond, she had Turtle in her little hands,  she blew him a  kiss and carefully put him in the water and he swam away.

She wiped a little tear from her sweet face, waved bye to Turtle and he was gone.

Everyone loved Julie up and down our neighborhood….. adults, kids even teen-agers.

“Call me Ju-Ju-Bug,” she’d tell them.

She was an animated little girl and so darn cute.

She made everyone smile.

She also made many of us LAUGH and that she still does.

She’s clever and quick with her wit and well…..she’s hysterical.

I used to tell her that she belonged on Saturday Night Live.

She was that kind of funny, still is.

Actually we think she’s way funnier.

She can listen to a person for just a few minutes, pick up on their mannerisms and voice and recreate them.

(I’m sure I’ve been one of her long-standing characters.)

My mother stopped at our house every day on her way home from work. 

Julie would spot her car in our driveway, yell from down the street, “GRANDMAAAA” and race home on her banana-seat, high handle-bar bicycle.

She’d run into the house and into my mom’s hug.

The two of them had an ongoing game.

Julie would hug her grandma and sit on her lap.

She’d see her glasses on the table.

“Grandma, can I wear your glasses?” she’d ask.

“For $100” was always my mom’s response.

Julie called her “Hundred Dollar Grandma.”

Julie also drove my mom’s car way before it was time, something I didn’t learn about for many years.

We had a Madonna way before the rest of the world did.

She lived in our house.

Dinner time was 6 p.m. and nightly just before 6, our Madonna would appear and come singing loudly down the steps both arms from wrist to halfway up her elbows with ring bracelets, long dangly earrings and half a dozen necklaces.

Her clothing always left me wondering….where’d she get those outfits?

I didn’t buy them!

Our dinner table was another nightly ordeal.

When Julie sat at her assigned seat, she stopped being Madonna and became a dinner time commedienne.

Nothing was wrong with her being funny, until she was SO funny that her audience of sisters, couldn’t keep their food in their mouths from laughing. 

Her timing often caused milk to come flying out of their mouths.

It was too late to stop her once she was on a roll and so, she was often banished to the kitchen to finish her dinner alone, but the laughing never stopped.

Unknown to me, Julie grew jars of Sea Monkeys in her closet, and often took in stray dogs (the four-legged kind) into her bedroom after everyone was asleep. 

Julie was my drama daughter, nobody did it better, and I was a sucker for her stories.

She could convince me of anything, absolutely anything!

(I’ve often wondered, when does a story turn into a lie?)

It hasn’t always been a smooth road.

Her teenage years were rocky and her young adult life was loaded with decisions that put her behind but she kept going and slayed all her dragons and then she soared.

She always wanted to be FIRST and to get and give the BIGGEST and BEST.

She’d  ask….”am I first mom”?    

“Did I give the biggest”?

“Did I get the best”?

She STILL asks!

On Thursday, December 17th of this dreaded 2020 year, she was of the FIRST in the entire state of California to recive the covid vaccination.

Julie works in Admitting at one of the largest Emergency Department’s  in Sacramento.

She lined up that morning, rolled up her sleeve and was part of history.

I’m bursting with pride and I’m relieved.

And yes Julie, you were of the first!

I’ve been worried beyond how I can explain in words about my daughter who shows up for work every night and admits covid patient after covid patient night after night.

Had she not stopped by to spend her life on this planet as my daughter, I would have missed her terrible.

My hope is…..

That Julie knows she touched a part of me that went deeper than any of my words could ever go…..

That she’s been one of the greatest joys of my life…..  

That I’ve always been SO proud of her…..

That I’ve loved every moment of her…..  

And finally, I hope she knows that I will always be with her, way beyond forever.