happy birthday, peggy...

the sun's first blinks of the day...

my mom, peggy janelle marshall--nee, huskey--would have been a milestone 75 years old today had she, almost a year ago, finally not succumbed to all the ravages that her bad health had wrought upon her frail body in the final years of her life. to the very end, she was as she always was--more worried about how others were doing than about her own suffering.

~

she was an avid american college basketball fan--the university of south carolina and duke university being her two favourites, respectively--and march is one of the best, if not THE best, months of the year for an american sports fan because of the championship tournament that determines the national basketball champion in america.

~

my absolute last conversation with my mom was in the final hours before she died, when she was wracked with a bad cough and i could barely understand her fractured voice from a cold she had caught--the absolute death knell for her because of how weak she was--but as i think of her on this day, i don't think of that last conversation, i think of the one before that, a few days earlier, just after the 2005 national championship game between the university of north carolina and the university of illinois. as a fan of duke, she was loathe to see any good fortune come to duke's archrival, north carolina, especially its winning the national championship. i can remember the disgust in her voice as she recounted a year ago how north carolina had won the championship game and was celebrating being national champions. "it just makes me sick," she said, all the funnier for her to say because of how sick she really was at that time.

~

so, here we are again, another march has rolled by, another college basketball tournament is nearing its end this weekend, as the championship game will be on monday, april 3. it's march 31, 2006, the first birthday without her for those of us who knew and loved her. it's a friday. as this day approached, i was apprehensive, as you might imagine, of how my emotions would be.

seung-hee and i formulated a plan several weeks ago to recognise mom's birthday, something simple but nonetheless commemorative and this is how it carried out:

the sun was fully cooperative on this special day...

although i went to bed last night around midnight after a bout of soju-imbibing, we woke up just after 5:00 this morning to head to the beach so we could watch the sunrise, have a beer, light a candle on a cake, and just say, "happy birthday." it was simple, not emotionally overwhelming, and not without the wry humour associated with nearly everything done in korea in the ways of a foreign culture, particularly regarding western culture.

the breakwater begins to illuminate...

as we took the ten-minute ride from our apartment, we could see the day dawning very well and looking as if the sunrise--indeed, the entire day--was going to be clear and beautiful. we got to anmok beach just before the sun creased the horizon and made some purchases from the family mart convenience store so ubiquitous to korea. my wife bought some coffee for the birthday toast while i purchased a couple of bottles of beck's beer--i'm not sure peggy ever had one, but it was a nod to her german ancestry. we hadn't thought to get a real cake the day before, so seung-hee bought a chocolate moon pie-like substance, then, realising that we'd forgotten candles, decided to buy the next best thing--a firecracker in the form of a sparkler. such is korea...!!

not traditional in any sense of the word, yet somehow appropriate...

anyway, we walked out onto the man-made concrete pier--called a breakwater--toward a perfect point at which we had an excellent, direct, view of the rising sun. the waves were rougher than normal and, while windy, it wasn't as windy as it could have been. i cracked open a beer and raised it in a salute to mom while my wife prepared the birthday "cake." we lit the sparkler and drove it into the "cake", clicked our coffee and beer, raised another birthday salute, and stood silently while watching the sun change from bulbous pink to ruby red to fiery orange to the blazing yellow it would remain until it set.

yes, this photo was altered somewhat....

it was brilliant, a great start to the day, full of good thoughts and reminesces as well as contrite thoughts of chances missed and never being available again. i didn't feel the dramatic presence many people might have felt while out there, i didn't have any overreaction of emotion that my mom was looking over my shoulder or down upon us--that is, until i said, "fuck", in regard to some nonsense, and my wife reprimanded me for it. only at that point could i see a shaking of the head in mock exasperation as i ruefully smiled at my wife's point.

happy 75th, ma; i miss you...