My mother went to work on a Thursday, May 27th as Donna Maria Thomas. She came back from her lunch break as Donna Maria Walker. That was the story. In my parents’ romance, lunch hours were never a time for actually eating lunch, but for things like making out on park benches and running down the street to the courthouse to get married. I remember making my parents recount the details for their 11th anniversary – that 11th anniversary was a little over 6 months before my 11th birthday. (It wouldn’t fully dawn on me that I attended that blessed event until sometime after my mother’s death I received a bible with their wedding anniversary and my birthday written together as events in the same calendar year.) I don’t remember my parents ever celebrating their wedding anniversary, but they both remembered it every year. It wasn’t strange to me that my parents didn’t celebrate their wedding anniversary – I never saw any parents doing that except on television. However, I considered it a significant milestone for my own life without any encouragement from anyone else.
Something else very special happened on a May 27th – my little sister was born on a Friday. As her mother, my Godmother, promised me she was born while I was safely at home away from the “drama”. I was nervous when she was heavily pregnant that she would suddenly go into labor like the ladies did on sitcoms and I didn’t want to be around when that happened. I remembered thinking, how perfect is it that my sister – who is not my parents’ child – was born on my parents’ anniversary? Why is that perfect? I don’t know exactly – I didn’t know then either.
May 27th has always felt like an important date for me. Maybe it was my parents’ anniversary but if I hadn’t come along when I did, how many more years beyond those 11 would they have continued their on-again, off-again romance? I used to get a kick out of the phrase “May-December Romance” because my parents were born 24 years apart and were the very definition of a May-December romance. And they got married in May. And I was born in December. And on another May 27th, I was gifted a baby sister. Yep – in my mind in those years that’s who she was to me, a gift. I knew even at age 6 to be chosen as a sister was something altogether different than being born into sisterhood. Neither is greater than the other but the intention behind the former is impossible to dismiss.
After I sent my sister birthday wishes, I decided to write about how I love May 27th. In December I explained how I hate December 26th (the day my mother died). In February I wrote about how I used to hate Valentine’s Day (the day my father died). Then I wrote about hating Mother’s Day. And Father’s Day is next month (and yes, I hate it too). So, I thought I’d throw in some of the days I have managed to love. I don’t have a lot of emotional and detailed events to share about why I love May 27th except that it’s the day that my parents came together, and the day my baby sister was presented to the world. It feels like God made that day just for me.
I love May 27th.
I am Regina Lynette 