March is a month of nostalgia for me.
It’s the birth month of my Mom. She said when her birthday came around she was foreshadowed by mine, two weeks earlier. Don’t you think it’s strange the things we remember?
I recently applied to Ontario, Canada for an original birth certificate. I never had one. I couldn’t remember the exact date of birth of neither of my parents. Weird, right? But I remembered the year and the story I’d told over the years of my ancestry on my mother’s side.
Four Curtin brothers came across from Ireland on a ship and married four Callaghan sisters! Two settled in Western Canada and two in the East–Ontario. What are the chances of that? It’s not a story you’d easily forget.
My mother was a beautiful woman who lived in a time when women stayed home and men went to war. And when some of the men came back, they brought the war zone with them. Unfortunately, I remember too much of that.
She was the one I counted on. She would listen to me and always told me I could do and be anything I wanted in life. She died in 2005. I’ve never returned to the town of my birth in Ontario since then.
I hope she’d be proud of the choices I’ve made. I know she understood when I took my heart from the frozen snow in Canada to the sun-filled days of Puerto Vallarta Mexico.
And I was blessed to feel her leaning over my shoulder as I wrote my memoir LOVE The Beat Goes On, she held my hand, every step of the way.
So today I honor her memory and share it with you.
I never told you enough how much I loved you. I miss you, Mom.
Lynda Filler 