This is my mother. I don’t mean this was my mother, or even this is a picture of my mother when she was a girl. I mean my mother is a girl. Sure she is 81 years old today and therefore also qualifies as a woman, but in all those years she has also been this little girl that you see in this photo.

You can hear the child Rosemary in flashes of laughter and find her lurking in the gleam in her eye. I experience her as great bursts of energy when she’s dancing at a party, or sipping a glass of wine. She delights in the same things she did when young, and retains a sense of adventure and wonder that too many of us often lose as we grow older.

Too often we look at our parents and see them as Mom and Dad, and not the people behind those labels

Happy birthday, Mom. Thank you for being a great example of how important it is to hold on to our youth as we grow older.