Since I don’t have a birthday very close to Christmas, I
don’t know what it’s like to have to squeeze in your birthday between all the
other festivities of the season. But I do remember being rather excited about
having a baby around Christmas. Almost like an extra Christmas gift.
I think Jenny was due somewhere around the 19th
of December. The orderly, patterned part of me wanted Mom to hold off for a
couple of weeks and have the baby in January of 1992. That just made sense as
thus far we had been born in 80, 82, 84, 86, 88 and 90. 1991 was going to break
this wonderful pattern. I don’t think Mom was at all interested in that
(although in 1995, Caleb would be two weeks late).
And it was just as well that Jenny didn’t wait two more weeks.
She weighed in at 10 pounds, 9 ounces when she arrived on December 13 – a
Friday. A cold Friday in Connecticut, but no snow. I remember Katey and I
celebrated by doing arts and crafts, making all us girls hairbows to wear from
some shimmering blue garland stuff. Perhaps that was a prediction of how
artsy/crafty Jenny would be.
Dad referred to Jenny as “Katey’s twin born 9 years late”.
And she was. Red hair. Musical. Crafty. And – freaky as this was – she’d pull
the exact same outfit combinations from the hand-me-downs in her closet that
Katey had worn. But Jenny was also her own personality.
From “stupy” clowns that lived in our Massachusetts
basement, to “playing the piano” in the windowsill (we did finally get her a
toy piano), to broken swings she couldn’t remember; Jenny lived in a world of
her own making. She never was three years old. We had never seen anyone simply
skip over math problems or grammar questions not because she didn’t know the
answer but because she just didn’t see it. And she was always big enough that
most people thought she was older than at least Grace (much to Grace’s
chagrin).
Jenny has the heart of a giver – making something and
turning around the next minute to give it away. She sewed enough doll clothes
for the little girls at church they must have had boxes overflowing with
adorable outfits. She loves to bake cupcakes, spends hours on her piano or at
her sewing machine and is a big Garfield fan.
Happy 23rd Birthday, Jenny!
