Put Your Left Hand In

Can you remember as you grew up or as you raised your own children, trying to teach them their right from their left? You would repeat the words right hand, left hand and right foot, left foot, over and over until they got the idea of those directions. I can remember teaching my kids as we were driving in the car and teaching them up and down as well. I’d repeat, “Up we go” as we climbed a hill or “Down we go” as we descended. “Left we Go” or right we go” as we motored to wherever we were going. For weeks, it was a constant drill. The older kids hated to hear my wife Cindy of me when we’d start.

Sometimes, even today, if one of my children is in the car with me, I’ll start the chant and watch them either smile and tell me to stop it or they might join in for a line or two. This memory has changed little over the years. But today I say it’s my good knee or my bad knee, my good wrist or my bad wrist, depending on the weather and which one aches the most.

I am creeping up on another birthday in March. Most of my past birthdays haven’t bothered me. Most I’ve laughed about or shrugged them off as just another year that I’ve been blessed to live. But this year is a milestone for me. I go from sixty-nine to seventy and for some reason, I am dreading it.

I’ve shared before the only other birthday that bothered me was the year I went from nineteen to twenty. The reasons were that I was in the Navy, it was my first birthday away from home, and I was no longer a teenager. I felt I was well on my way to adulthood.

Other reasons for my dread to see March roll around each year are the sad memories that cling to my birthday month; the death of my wife Cindy from ovarian cancer sixteen years ago and the death of my mother Sybil from Alzheimer’s disease three years later on the very same day. These anniversaries are memories that I revisit each March.

March is also a month that can’t make up its mind. It’s not quite winter and not quite spring. I am weary of the cold snowy months and anxious to feel the sun’s warming rays. The battle continues each and every day. Just as the memories of past birthdays and past events struggle with the present.