HAPPY BIRTHDAY

8 June 2022

Today is my cousin Peach's birthday.  She was 3 years older than I am.  I have 32 cousins and she was the closest to me, my entire life.
 

(with our cousin Ken)

At some point when she was young, her mother was having problems and they put Peach in a boarding school in San Francisco.  I remember going to visit her there.

We spent time together in Inverness, where my grandparents lived and where Peach's family built a house. 

I can remember the two of us harvesting blackberries together and sitting in the big tree on the property eating apples and chatting.  Several years ago, when we scattered our cousin Kathy's ashes, we drove by the Inverness property and saw our old tree...but we didn't climb it.

Her family built a house in Citrus Heights, outside Sacramento.  We visited there frequently.  Peach's father was the only relative of my mother's that my father actually liked.  We started spending a month together each summer, when I was in grammar school.  I would spend 2 weeks in Citrus Heights with Peach. 

While her sister Mandy would spend those two weeks in San Francisco with my sister.  Then we would switch and Peach would live in SF while Karen spent 2 weeks in Citrus Heights.

riding bikes through Golden Gate Park

I learned how to harmonize in Citrus Heights.  Peach taught me "You are My Sunshine" and we would sit on the grass in front her her house, under a weeping willow tree, and sing the song.  I also saw Elvis Presley for the first time there...her friends were watching him on TV and I didn't much like him, so I sat outside watching the horse in the field while Peach was inside watching Elvis.  When I was going to my first high school dance, I didn't know how to dance to rock and roll music, and she taught me how.

I was her maid of honor at her wedding,

and godmother to her son,

and when she lived on an island in Alaska while her husband was in the Navy, I kept writing her letters to keep her connected.

When Walt and I moved to Oakland she realized that she never gave us a wedding present and so she gave us Jeff, a sheltie puppy -- she was raising shelties at the time.

But after that we drifted apart.  I didn't see or hear from her in years, even after I moved to Davis, close to where she lived.  I didn't find out why until later.  Our uncle Paul died.  He had been a sculptor who made these marvelous monster statues.  His girlfriend gave them all to me to distribute to the family.  Peach and her husband came for dinner to get her statue and our friendship picked up where it had left off.  She told me later that motherhood had been so painful for her that she didn't want to be around me with my little children because it reminded her of a painful part of her life.

We became friends again and eventually we formed "Cousins Day" after my mother was hospitalized briefly.  Peach, our cousin Kathy and I went to my mother's every month.  We spent the night and played cards from the moment we arrived until the moment we left.  Those were some of my favorite times until Kathy died and Peach's husband had a stroke that ended up having her move to Iowa to be with their daughters.

When Peach was diagnosed with breast cancer and was going to start chemo, I flew to Iowa to help her through the early days, but she ultimately decided not to go through chemo because after her mastectomy she had no symptoms and she was hoping she would live long enough to take care of her husband, who was still having problems after his stroke.

I stayed with them for 3 weeks and when I left Ohio, I knew I would never see her again...and I didn't.  Her cancer metastasized to her brain and it was brain cancer that killed her...her husband lived several years after her death.

But I think of her every year on her birthday and remember the full life and the life long friendship we had, and value the memories.