For me it meant some time to speak to a grown-up, which for some reason was always a thrill for me. Mrs. Goldstein, I must add for the sake of clarity, was not my second grade teacher. I was in a neighboring classroom taught by Ms. McCowan, who left mid-year to be married (presumably a career-ending event in 1972/3), and subsequently by Mrs. Sederoff. But at recess I eagerly looked forward to chatting up Mrs. Goldstein. I can only surmise that it must have made me feel important to talk to adults while the other students played. It may reflect an early identification as an outsider among my peers, though I might be stretching a bit there, and expecting too much of my poor 40 year old memory cells on that account. Ok, so back to Mrs. Goldstein, and her relevance to my mother's 80th birthday...

One autumn day I recall telling Mrs. Goldstein that it was my mother's birthday. I cannot say for certain whether she asked me or whether I volunteered the information, but I spat out my mother's age. "My mother's twenty-one," I said confidently. [Very confidently because on that very day my mother had told me that she was 21, so I had no doubt.] Mrs. Goldstein gave me a look and her voice took a tone of skepticism. "Are you sure that your mother is 21? That's not possible. It would mean she had you when she was 14." Now, I can't say there are very many things that I remember about second grade, but this one conversation stayed with me for my whole life. It set into motion the idea in my mind that there was something wrong with the information I had been given, or that there was some kind of secret or adult information to which I was not privy. I was determined to figure it out. When I arrived home later that day I simply asked my mother. "Mrs. Goldstein said that you could not be 21." My mother's response was reflexive. "You should not be discussing your mother's age with anyone outside the family." And that was that.

Not long after, I discovered my mother's driver's license and I found my answer. There it was right next to her birthday, October 14. Her age! She was 26, not 21. I never said anything to her, but at some point later I remember proudly sharing this information with my younger brother and sister, feeling that they had a right to know that Mommy was 26. The issue came and went pretty quickly. I cannot recall how much time passed until I realized that "26" was not in fact my mother's age, but the year of her birth. What I should have been telling Mrs. Goldstein was that my mother was 47, probably considerably older than Mrs. G was at the time.

Anyway, that is how I came to realize that my mother was almost exactly 40 years older than me. As I grew older, I realized that 1926 was a time before WWII, before television and commercial airlines. It was also before the Great Depression. It was the Jazz Age of the Great Gatsby, in other words, it was a very long time ago. I looked at 1926 and I realized that 40 years of my mother's life had passed before she married my father and adopted us. And I realized that one day she would finally be twice as old as me: when I was 40 and she was 80.

Like the Jazz Age and the stock market crash of 1929, my mother's 80th birthday always seemed so far away. Even as I entered my late-thirties, the double birthday year did not seem imminent. But in a sense I had always been waiting for the 40+40=80 year. I wanted to know what it had been like for my mother to have lived 40 years before I became a part of her life, and I trusted that I would know how that felt only once I turned 40.

In the months before my 40th birthday my mother's health continued to decline. From July 26, 2005, the date of her diagnosis with ALS or Lou Gherig's disease, until September 26, 2006 fourteen long months passed. My mother's motor neurons died gradually and she became less able to walk or use her arms, or eventually to talk or swallow. As my fortieth birthday neared, I began to realize that our double birthday year would probably be the last birthdays we ever celebrated together. I spent four days with my mother just before my birthday. By then she was no longer eating or drinking, but for the occasional few sips of water. I was back in New York on the day that I turned 40. I called my brother and suggested that he take a week off work because I believed we were down to the last few weeks. I called the house on my birthday to speak to my sister, and my mother's nurse put the phone to her ear so that she could hear my voice. The next day my mother passed away.

When my mother died three weeks ago, I was heartbroken. I knew that this event was coming, and yet I felt completely unprepared, even cheated. My mind kept saying to me, "It's too soon. I'm not ready. It's not fair. She didn't have enough time." All of those things are true. My mother knew she was dying and her mind was fully aware of that. But it came much faster to her than she expected. I could not believe that she was not going to make it to her 80th birthday. Only one of us made it to the double birthday.

And so on October 14, I thought about my mother's 80th birthday. I thought about how far 1926 was from 2006 and how many wonderfui adventures and tremendous challenges my mother had expererienced in those 8 decades. I thought about how lucky I was to have been born in 1966 and to have been adopted by my parents, thus joining them in their life's journey.

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