Happy Birthday, Pat

Fifty-five years ago today, Paul and Margaret welcomed a second daughter into their family. Patricia Ann was chubby and cheerful, or so I’ve heard from family stories and seen in family pictures.

At the time, Pat was the youngest of the whole extended family. Her brother and sister were much older, as were the cousins who got together all the time. It didn’t take her parents long to realize that they needed to have a fourth child to raise along with Pat so that she wasn’t so spoiled.

That’s how I ended up in the picture. Or at least in these pictures. 

Christmas 1967

 Christmas 1971

 July 1985, the day of my first wedding. 

No, we hadn't planned on wearing the same style of shirt that morning.

 Summer 1993, at O-Kun-De-Kun Falls in Michigan's U.P. on our way to go camping. 

Don't you love my shorts. I finally threw them away just a few years ago. Scary. 

 Spring 1997, at The Luxor in Las Vegas

Summer 1997, camping with my kids at Amnicon State Park.

We got the camper out this weekend to clean it up to take camping later this month. I panicked over its state of decrepitness, fearing there was no way we could take it camping. I shed a few tears at the thought of losing it, got a grip, cleaned it up and told it that it had to give us a few more trips.

Happy Birthday, Pat. You bum, you will forever be 39, while I keep getting older. Someday down the road, we will be together again. And then it won’t matter how old we are.