Written Dec. 3, 2008
A Star is Born! Happy Birthday, Joy!
My little girl turns 27 years old today and I wanted to take the time to wish her a very Happy Birthday. Grammie Arlene used to start her grandchildren’s birthday with “27 years ago today . . .” (or whatever birthday it was we were celebrating) and then tell us all something she remembered about the day. Grammie Arlene’s birthday is also today, so I thought I’d give Grammie Arlene’s tradition a try:
Joy was born in Lincoln, ME at the Penobscot Valley Hospital on a snowy December afternoon. I didn’t know if I was going to have another boy or a girl, since I had declined finding out the gender from the ultrasound. She was my little, good luck charm, I remember. Earlier that week, I had bought a Pepsi at Drake’s General Store in Lee and had won a radio cassette player from it off a bottle cap promotion. Debbie Drake had to send away to Pepsi for it, so it wasn’t delivered until later–after I had already gone to the hospital.
Paul & I were in the Lee Baptist Church when it was a Dunphy cult in those days. No TV–it was from the Devil. Paul & I were so poor, it wouldn’t have mattered anyway–we couldn’t have afforded a TV. So when I won a cassette player to listen to music on, I was thrilled. We lived way up on the Arab Rd. in those days. Joy won’t remember but has heard stories of how the local drug dealer lived down in woods in past us. Except for the black Cadillacs on Friday night coming out to pick up their pot, life in the woods was pretty boring for me most of the time. I hadn’t been raised in Maine and had no idea how to do anything useful during the long, boring days when Paul was away working in the woods. Needless to say, I saw winning that cassette player as a real answer to prayer.
Joy was the only child I had who was born during the day. I forget exact time and weight, but I think it was around 2pm and she weighed a little over 8 lbs. She was delivered by Dr. Emilio Ocana, the same doctor who delivered all 3 of my babies. I’m horrible at details. I wish I could remember who her nurse was, what room she was born in, who came to visit us, etc. Since I tend to remember the really horrible or really fantastic, I suppose everything was just normal. It wasn’t until years later that I got in the habit of journalling. Writing journals is as much about recreating the daily, average life as it is the extremes of life. It’s about collectiing details of how life was, so I’m not sure how to reconstruct the event. Maybe my mom or Kathy will remember?
Joy was named after a song I sung a lot in those days: “Hold on my child, Joy comes in the morning. Weeping only lasts for awhile. The darkest hours means dawn is just in sight.” It’s also a great promise–“And Joy shall be in Heaven” (don’t have time to look up the verse now) Her middle name is Rene (e needs an accent on it). I took French in high school and I thought the accent was cool. It was multicultural.
What I loved about being the mom of a newborn baby was how she felt. I got used to feeling this kicking and thrashing, turning and moving inside of me for the previous few months. There is about a 24 hour stretch of time when you feel extreme pain. My uterus never made long enough or strong enough contractions, so I always got put on some medicine that made the contractions feel even worse. Then there is the birth and suddenly that moving inside me is laying cuddled up on my chest. It is the same feeling except now it’s on the outside, hindered by the force of gravity it doesn’t do much turning. But for a few days, I can feel the same motions and little fist jabs. Then she begins her struggle to defy gravity. Within a year, she will have picked up her head, turned over, sat up, crawled, stood up, and walked. Our bipedal battle against Newtonian physics makes us human, makes us individuals able to perform death-defying feats of calculus in order to balance ourselves in time and space, but I love those few few moments of life when that baby laying on my chest is the same baby who shared my air, my food, my body.
Our family joke goes something like this: “Joy was born with a 2000 word vocabulary and the will power of an iron man.” That girl seemed to know what she wanted and she would never take anything less. She refused to take a bottle, so I capitulated and breast-fed her. Of all my children, she was the child who demanded my complete attention and affection from Day 1. I used to have to beg my mom or grandparents to babysit her for a couple hours so I could go grocery shopping. I had to beg them because from the second I left until the second I returned, she would scream with a pitch that could rival Sarah Brightman and a force that could knock out Christina Aguilera AND Shakira. I’m so glad she was able to harness that voice into something beautiful. We all remember Joy singing “Happy Birthday” to us with her “Bird-like” voice.
I haven’t heard Joy sing much in person since Oct. 2006 when we traveled to Ft. Hood, TX before Joel deployed to Iraq. One afternoon, Joy, Joel, and I visited at Joel’s Copperas Cove house and played “We’re Almost Famous”: Joel played the guitar. Joy sang. I took videos. Since Joel died, I have watched those videos of them over and over again. My prayer for her is that one day music will return to her soul and she’ll want to sing again. Maybe she won’t be famous, but I would just love to hear her soul again as she expresses it through song.
Being in that ridiculous Fundamentalist Baptist cult not only meant that TV was from the Devil, it also meant that women wearing pants was from the Devil. Little girls, even baby girls always had to wear skirts or dresses. What insanity was that? But there is a photographer’s gratitude that we were in that phase during those years. In all my little girl photos of her, Joy is dressed in adorable little dresses with ringlet curls. Granted in some of those photos, she’s also wearing snow pants and winter boots under that skirt, but Joy sure did take an awfully cute picture. She loved the attention.
I was working, going to university, volunteering in church, and running a household, but even though I was always “too” busy, I was never “too” busy to regularly do some hobby or activity with each of my kids. With Luke it was karate. With Joel it was sports, hunting, guitar. With Joy, our Mother and Daughter “Thing” was pageants. We participated in them regularly for awhile there. In her first pageant, Little Miss Lincoln, she played the keyboard for talent. She was about 7 then. She had been told to smile at the audience, and that’s what she did–like a mannequin with its head turned, she never looked once at the keyboard. In the Miss Tri-County Pageant in junior high, she sang and danced “Dream Lover” with a mop.
Joy never brought home “the crown”. In every pageant, there was always this older girl, Ashley Lynn Marble, who looked and tapped danced like Shirley Temple. That girls was amazing, and when we saw her show up for practice, our hearts always sank a little. But even though Joy was young, she intuitively understood that pageants weren’t all about being princess for a year–they were about learning to be princess for life. Ashley Lynn set the bar high and Joy went back each year and worked to improve herself. The better talent never defeated her because she was working for a bigger crown.
In 4th grade, she came home crying that all her friends didn’t like her anymore. Not being accepted or loved by one’s classmates is an ordeal that every 4th grade girl must go through. “They won’t let me be in their gang at recess,” she cried.
“So, why don’t you make your own group and not let them be a part of it?” I asked. I’ve taught kids for many years and have dealt with their pain when it’s their turn to be on the receiving end of a bully, a snob, or a cheat. My advice is always the same that I gave to JOY–don’t let them know they hurt you AND make your gang. As far as I know, Joy is one of the few kids who actually had enough self confidence to play the game as it was dealt her. Mandy Chubbuck and she formed their own recess gang and wouldn’t let the other girls in. I think it helped that I let her host a cool party at my house and she didn’t have to invite the snobs. I never heard any more from Joy about her classmates not liking her–they never dared. To her credit, she managed to navigate the peer-pressure waters of high school without succumbing to drugs, tobacco, or alcohol. I believed her when she said she didn’t take them, because she wouldn’t even drink soda! It would ruin her teeth and her appearance!
Through our Mother and Daughter “Thing”, Joy learned to lose with grace, not run from the competition, and play in the game that was dealt her. She also learned to stay cool under stress, talk to judges with composure, smile through everything, never look down, and dance with the props she had rather than worry about the props the competition had.
Those lessons had to have helped her get to where she is today. I’m her mom, so of course, I’d say how proud I was of her. But she really has been amazing. She graduated from the University of Maine with a Bachelor’s in International Studies, concentration in Spanish. She has steadily increased in experience in Human Resources and has recently been hired by Progress Energy to recruit professional talent for their nuclear energy plant. She knows what she wants and who she is.
I’ve a lifetime of stories I hope to write about Joy someday. Today is Grammie Arlene and her birthday, and “a little birdie told me” that I should start writing my Joy stories down even though most of them are well-known to her and our family. Did you know that Joy is a secret agent who saved the world from Montezuma’s Revenge while undercover in Mexico? Well, friends, that story is for another day.
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