Coincidental birthdays

After I mentioned this post coming the other day, I realized that one of my cousins in Kentuckyand a very dear friend who is an Arizona girl like me but only moved back again a couple of years ago share August 18. They are not too far from the same age, both younger than me but I think Ruth Ann, my cousin is a wee bit younger, maybe five years or so. Happy birthday--belatedly--to Ruth ann Witt and Melinda Rucker Haynes!

May 1969

High school senior

Now to the August 20 birthdays. I first met Betsy in the spring of 1969 when she was between nine and ten. She was one of those children who had been around adults more than other kids and was quite mature for her age in many ways. She was the daughter of one of my profs at Northern Arizona University and I came to be a companion-sitter for her rather often for a year or so there. I last saw Betsy in the spring of 1971; later that year her parents and she went to Australia for a year or two and then lived in several different places when they came back to the states. She wrote me off and on for several years.  It was she to whom I gave the big batch of paper dolls which her mother returned to me, still in very excellent condition, in about 2006 when she came across them in packing to move back east after her husband ,Betsy's dad,  had passed away. Oddly, Betsy was just a bit younger than my youngest brother and my middle step-son. They were both born in 1959, Alex in May and David in July, so she was just a wee bit younger than they. She and Alex would have hit it off, I think, both rather fey, very bright and somewhat eccentric kids. The last I knew, she lived in Albuquerque and was involved in some kind of social work. that is not surprising since her parents were both rather that type as well. Happy birthday Betsy, wherever you may be tomorrow as you celebrate your 57th!!

My best portrait if Dusty

The other birthday on August 20 was my first love and very special friend who would have been 36 when Betsy was born. Dusty was born in upstate New York and adopted as an infant. He worried a bit about not knowing his birth parents and background as did my husband who experienced a similar situation, but to me it made no difference in either case. They were both good men who had been raised by good foster parents. However Dusty came to Arizona as soon as he got out of the military (he joined the navy at a very early age) and became thoroughly western, He always wanted to own a ranch and we shared that dream for awhile. Sadly it and many others never came to pass but I carry a trove of precious memories of the times we spent together.  He passed away in 1993 so I would have been a widow ten years sooner had we married as we hoped at one time to do. RIP Dusty and wherever you are, I still remember your birthday and am very thankful that you were born, whatever the circumstances may have been. We were only for a reason and a season and not forever but who knows what happens next time?

In some ways Betsy was the daughter I never had although I cherish my step-daughter very deeply. Jenna is very much her daddy's girl and her birthday is September 14 (1964)  so she does not belong in this month's bunch.

Maybe in some alternate world, Dusty and I did marry, got our ranch and had a son, Duncan Morgan and a daughter Charlene Angela--with reddish brown hair, very blue eyes and crooked teeth, inherited from both parents! I sometimes think every choice or fork in one's path results in two futures--somehow and somewhere. Who knows? It's kind of like in Richard Bach's lovely, odd book One.