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Birth Day Stories

Keeping Family History Alive

By Maria T. Olia

When I was a kid the pleasure was in hearing my birth story. As I grew up, the story of my "exoticness" helped explain a lot during those awkward teenage years. And Winston Churchill attained near-hero status for Michael, because, after all, they were once "look-a-likes." Growing up, my brother and I knew very clearly from "whence we came" because our birth stories were part of our family history.

Now I know, as a parent you sometimes have to help family history along. I hope someday my kids take their oldest brother out for a birthday dinner at a Mexican restaurant, send a birthday bouquet of red and yellow tulips to their brother born in April, call "Turkey Baby" on Thanksgiving and remember the wonder of a room full of pink balloons and a new baby sister.

And every year on my birthday morning I know that my parents will call me, using two phones and one phone line, and tell me my birth story. On my birthday my parents remember themselves as a young couple with a dark-haired baby in an orange blanket. My birth story is one of the ways my parents tell me they love me. And for that reason, just as my own kids do, I still love to hear it.

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• Talk about it!