A Distant Twinkle for Mary

I chose my Christmas gift 25 years before I was born. I chose wisely. On that day, Mary Keenan, who had just arrived bag and baggage in Rochester, New York from County Cork Ireland, gave birth to her first child...and named her Mary.  I sent that child the twinkle in her Irish eyes.

Young Mary went on to celebrate another 91 Christmas birthdays. I was around for 67 of them as she was glad to see my father and her husband who saw my twinkle when he returned from the Phillipines at the end of WW2 which made me part of a significant demographic excess known as the Baby Boom.

When she was child, she raised her brother and two sisters as her father died suddenly when she was in high school. She lived to be near the bedside of all of 'em when they passed. Same with my father, she comforted him till he died in her arms.

I was the oldest of her three children.

She loved me and supported us, every day of our lives.

I never bothered to ask her to thank me for choosing her above millions of candidates to be my mother while I was in my first infinity before my vacation before my next and final infinity.

And I know I'll see her again.

The stars twinkle