Today is my son’s birthday and unlike previous birthdays we will not be awakening him at the crack of dawn with hats, and whistles and dogs and cameras and voices raised in his all time least favourite song:
“Happy birthday to you…”
Nope, today he awakens himself at the crack of dawn to go to work and if we know which 5 o’clock it happens to be when he comes into our room to say “goodbye” we’ll mutter something like,
“Goodnight, Simon, have a great day…and oh! Happy birthday!” to which he’ll say,
“Have a great day too and happy birthday! See you tomorrow!”
So that will be it! No lovely, long drawn out day of celebration, just a quick exchange on the threshold of our bedroom!
In retribution I am including a story about him:
Before he was awarded his science degree from A&M thus acquiring him the unrivaled privilege of shoveling Okapi excrement at dawn each morning and hauling hay for the rest of the day, at the Dallas Zoo where he works, he volunteered at the local animal shelter where he hosed dog excrement from the indoor and outdoor runs. There is a pattern here if you look closely.
He would bring home abandoned babies for us to bottle feed, raccoons, squirrels, ducklings and opossum. These abandoned, wild, babies were not supposed to be handled unless absolutely necessary but my children never got the hang of this, the raccoons were irresistible, so were the squirrels…they were petted, talked to, loved and named; they swam in the pool and romped with the dog…wild? Hah!
As a family all this nurturing became a valuable lesson in responsibility, the little ones would blindly feed at two hour increments all day and night and when they opened their eyes, whoever was first in the line of vision became MUM!! When it was time to release them at about 8-10 weeks they would either go to a professional rehab place to learn how to survive in the wild (mostly the raccoons), or be released out in the country. Once we made the mistake of letting a couple of the tamest almost domesticated squirrels loose in our back forty…and now we are paying for it! We play host to a new family of the critters each year in our chimney. No matter what we do to block up the entrances, they always squirreledly find their way home. Rather like salmon swimming upstream to the place of their birth. They ruin our wood trim, our roof, our house.
Each Spring we hear the babies; first they romp in the chimney, exploring their nursery; as they get older we watch them cautiously emerge from the stack and run across the roof before returning to Mum, and safety. At this stage they are nearly ready to flee the nest so we give them a little encouragement. By blocking up the escape holes in the chimneystack we limit their exit to an outdoor vent in the eaves where we can watch the activity. From the vent we run a 2×4 to the grass, and watch for several days as they hesitantly walk the plank nudged by Mum. When we are certain everyone is out we remove the wood and listen for a day before battening down the hatch. Accidentally leaving a runt inside can foul up the air in the house for months!
The following year we repeat the process. No matter how diligent we’ve been with the mesh and the wire, they gain access very time. As a zoo keeper, with friends in high places, our son, the absent birthday boy, is now threatening to bring home a baby elephant to bottle feed around the clock.
Charming as that sounds am I ready for elephants in my chimney?
Well hello there! My name is Vivienne McNeny.
I am an empty nester exploring life as a Boomer…you could say I'm happily Boomering along!
As a homeschooling Mum I have finally quit the job of role model and mentor to my four children. I do what I want to do, eat when I feel like it, enjoy life with my blue eyed cowboy and clean my house once a month or so whether it needs it or not!
In true English form I write about the emergence of my true identity now that I can no longer hide behind my children as their Mum.
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