So, guess what I was doing August 18, 1979???
I was in labor and having a baby!
wow, am I talented or what...
I love this saying...I'm so crafty I make humans...
Well, today is my youngest childs Birthday...
I really, wasn't sure I was up to handling it all...I mean I already had 2 other amazing intelligent kids...was I crazy. Yes. It was surely one of the top best 5 decisions of my life....(top 3..have 3 kids)
So who is this stunningly clever child...the mommy-looking one in the top picture?
She's Annie Rose Bastian..
Always a sweet and sensitive baby, she has grown into a real person that astounds me...with her ability to be her own person...
I find this trait missing from most humans...Annie isn't a pale copy of some lifestyle magazine....
She has made her life just what she wants...and the love and smartness is like a fragrant aura around her...she has an amazing gift for making you feel the center of attention...
When she was in elementary school, which really did not suit her, and had I been a better mother, I'd have home-schooled her more...but she had me make her, among others, a Pippi Longstocking costume and an Alice In Wonderland costume so she could wear them to school..often...and not just on Halloween...Can you imagine the nasty comments she had to put up with as a 9 year old girl in a middle-class neighborhood? It didn't deter her from letting her Freak Flag Fly !
She had a lot of fun at Grant Elementary tho...but she always kept her teachers on their toes...she wasn't one to receive their knowledge without some challenges to the orthodoxy and provincialism.
She's a talented artist who sews her own clothes and makes things for her home..she paints..she gardens...she recycles...she writes...she crafts....she embroiders and appliques and changes things up, to remake everyday things so the world she creates for her husband and daughter is even more lovely and unique than the boring old daily.
A picture she took...I love her lighting and what she created with only a few items...so evocative...
She mostly vegan...far more than I...if you go to her house to eat you'll get brown rice, raisins, and walnuts in your salad and you will love it ! It will taste like the best meal you have ever had because she has a knack for mixing things you wouldn't think would go together, but Annie makes them wonderful.....She mixed me a special tea blend...for my ailments...
She decided to have her baby in a warm water tub with a midwife...and she did...& even with a supportive community, that is a first-world triumph. But that attests to her fortitude ...
Her husband is a darling and my granddaughter Ruby is a Bee Charmer...I love how she takes me around the yard, climbs her trees, invites me up, shows me the chickens, the berry patch, the swing, and makes sure I have a trowel so I can dig with her while we look for worms.
When I am with Annie I sometimes I forget she's my daughter...I see her as her own person...like someone I met in college, someone who works at the co-op, an artist at a Farmer's Market...because she is.....
The thing I love about her most is her super-sharp wit and dry observances of life, of the people she meets and how it all doesn't knock her off the path...while she packs it all away in her mind ....all the cacophony of the modern world...
So Happy Birthday Annie...thanks for letting me be your Mom!
no, I still haven't scanned in the mountains of pictures I took the old-fashioned way...I have only a darn few of digitals...so here goes. She's the tiny one in these first 2...
A few years ago at christmas...
