Timing is Everything

Tomorrow is my birthday.  I'm kind of thinking, eh...so what.  Honestly.  I don't feel sorry for myself or anything.  It's just kind of become another day, which is kind of weird.

After my mom passed away, I got the feeling that April 13th was only a truly significant day to one other person in my life--my mom.  It was the day she met me for the first time, and it was the day I met her.  Others in my life have forgotten my birthday in the past, and I haven't thought much about that.  I realized that my mom was the only person who would never forget why it was a significant day and that that significance was because of me.

So, now, let me share my Twilight Zone kind of life.  I guess you could say it was more of a tender mercy, but it depends on if you believe in coincidence or in miracles.  I tend to be a miracle-believing type of girl myself.

When I was a child, because I was born on the day before Easter and because my mom found their fuzziness so irresistible, my mom would buy me a stuffed rabbit for my birthday.  Even my second year of college, I went to the apartment door after hearing a knock, to find the mailman standing there with a large box.  Sure enough, it was full of a large, flop-eared white stuffed bunny.

The year after my mom passed away, I went to visit my dad.  It was April 12th.  When I walked into his bedroom, he told me he'd been cleaning out some closets and found some things I might be interested in.  They were on the dresser.  The first thing I went to was a plastic bag.  I opened it; inside was a small, white stuffed rabbit.  Amazing, even gone from this life, she was remembering my birthday.

That rabbit has sat on a shelf in my bedroom ever since.  It's become such a part of the furnishings that I had forgotten that it was even there.

So, let's step a little farther into the Twilight Zone...

I got up early this morning.  I was given a new calling at church yesterday, which is proving to be a lot of work, so I got up to get some things done.  I worked for quite awhile and got a lot accomplished.  I was happy about that.  I got up to get L as she was done with her nap.  As I went to climb the stairs to the bedroom, there, on the stairs was the old white rabbit.  The one my mom had "given" to me the year after she died.

Suddenly the significance hit me.  Why today of all days?  T had found it on the shelf this morning.  Why, when it has been there for years had he chosen today to climb on a chair, pull it by the leg and drag it down the stairs just to drop it on the bottom step?

Could it be that she's thinking about me?  Could she be telling me that I'm still significant to her?  I like to think so because she's still significant to me.