Happy Birthday, Pink!
As I was reading the paper this morning, I noticed the date, 13 April 2008. Today is Pink's birthday. This evening, as I was thinking about what I was going to write, it suddenly dawned on me - today is the 100th anniversary of her birth. People always want to divide things into convenient chunks of time, and "100" seems to be particularly significant. This may be true, but Pink was significant every day of her life!
She brightened the day of anyone whose life she touched. Like her mother, she always saw the good in people - never focused on the negative. She loved words, and passed this joy in language on to her children and grandchildren. She cast a long shadow, and I'm sure that influence will continue. Widowed at 41, Pink did a great job of raising her two teen-aged daughters alone, then making a life for herself after they left home.
This true lady (small-town Southern gentry) had a wicked sense of humor. Her favorite word was callipygious. (Look it up!) Once, probably around 1980, she asked me to return a book to the library for her. Her comment was, "I don't mind a little sex in a book, but I don't want an instruction manual".
I wish she had lived to move to Chattanooga with us - she would've loved this city. She would've been so proud when I graduated from college, only 37 years after I graduated from high school. She would have been thrilled with all her great-grandchildren.
In case you haven't figured it out, Pink was my mother.
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