2026.08.07 It's My Birthday,#88—Mmmmhmmm, Lyn G. Brakeman, blog post

I don’t look 88 but more like 68, people tell me. But I know they are wrong, and I have legal stuff to prove my birthright, which is lucky in 2026, because in these days of tyranny in the white house and terrors on the streets of NYC where I was born and grew up, I needed proof!  My own version of “birthright citizenship.” Here I am at 4 with my mother at our summer cottage in Ancramdale, N.Y. She’s happy. I am pouting—it’s the pinafore! Not my style. 

The Holy Bible I got to know in Sunday School proved questionable. The teacher told us God loved us ALL the same. Me too? This supposedly Holy Bible had such an array of holy variations, we had free choices despite what  rules the Church, or our parents, made. Still, it was easy to doubt the whole darn thing. BUT, I kinda liked being me. I prayed a lot and searched about. 

My own biblical proof of faith/existence, became Job. Wrong testament, right guy. Why? Oh, because Job too had trouble proving he was really a faithful Jew all his entire life—and born so. He wanted God, the ONE and ONLY Divinity known by scholars throughout ancient scriptures, to testify to Job’s own faith, despite evidence to the contrary. Did Yahweh God believe in Job?  

Jesus didn’t fare too well with me either. I sidestepped the Jewishness, because my own maternal grandfather was Jewish. It took years to hear about this connection. Was I a Jew masquerading as a Christian?  Well, so was Mary Magdalene, everyone’s favorite sinner to hate. Surely she should be my role model even though I seemed to have the wrong church, the wrong Holy Bible, even the wrong God or brand of religion, and no useless beads! Holy Mary Mother of God pray for me NOW, NOT at the hour of my death—okay?

So God’s own mother, overrode her son and fixed my gaze on a Crockpot, a live-in cook who simmered as I watched. She gave me patience, enough to invent my own specialties, and therefore, like God, I CREATED. One such creation I called “Angels on Horseback” (hot dogs astride twice baked potatoes with cheese strips as their saddles) and my children loved, for the laughs if nothing else.

As to sex, we women had anatomical help from science, and Eve Ensler (Vagina Monologues) and again to the divine creator who made us with our own equipment —a self-satisfying undersized penis all our own. Who needs a guy?  Well, I wanted one who thought like me and loved ALL of me, every ornery bit of me, and was born on the same leonine date. Who else could appear but another Episcopal priest?  Just my style!

                        *  *  *  *

And God said, I created everything/everyone, and it’s ALL good—all kinds & variations of LOVE.                              

Mmmmmhmmmm

2018.09.02 Eighty Is Eighty

This is how my 80th birthday celebration went.  I’ve written about this in many ways in different sites, but I’m not done celebrating. 

I was born August 7, 1938. My husband Dick was born also on August 7 but in 1941. His brain is three years younger than mine. That’s helpful at my age! (Photo November, 2017)

We decided in 2018 to celebrate our one day twice—one dinner out for my day and one for his. The first dinner was at a new Indian restaurant, Nirvana in Cambridge. We love Indian food and had scheduled our reservation early, 5:30—the hour of dining for oldies and what I’d sworn I’d never do. We expected nirvana. When we arrived we were greeted by the noisy, messy chaos of a birthday party for a group of eleven-year-old boys, complete with birthday cake and a food fight. So we talked about memories of being wildly pre-pubescent ourselves and memories of being parents of seven children and a few grandchildren in the same state of explosive life.

Our second chosen restaurant is a favorite neighborhood restaurant—Italian, Dick’s heritage. We are friendly with the staff. I have learned a few Italian words and some of the wait staff speak Spanish. It’s the restaurant we went to nearly every night when we first moved to Cambridge eight years ago and were waiting for our appliances to be installed. We were sure we’d be feted and treated like the regulars we are, and especially with a high profile birthday. However, both managers were on vacation, the place was hopping with people who had spilled out and into the restaurant from an event in nearby Danehy Park, and they were understaffed and rushing around, even had the bartender waiting tables. They hardly noticed us. We talked about the spirituality of patience, finally agreeing that it was for the saints, or at least the birds.  Spoiled, privileged, entitled, yes, but not guilty. Prego.

We got off to our two weeks' vacation in Nantucket the next day. Even the ferry food tasted good, and the sun shone brightly as the sea breeze unruffled our feathers. We were almost afraid to try again at our favorite island restaurant, 56 Union. We waited till Monday, a low night we hoped, and we went at 7 p.m. As we came in the hostess asked us if we’d like to be seated in “the quiet room.”  Ah!  Aging is good.

At the end of our birthday month after we were back home, my four children, all from Connecticut, came to take me out for lunch on Sunday August 26. They had asked what I wanted and I told them I wanted to be together with them—just them, no spouses or grandchildren. They thought we could meet somewhere equidistant, but I said I wanted them to come here. One daughter had never seen where I live in retirement. And so it was. Our lunch at Artistry on the Green in Lexington, was elegant, quiet, and relaxed. No agendas, no need for deep confessions, no leftover family kvetches, no pressurized joy. It was perfect, which doesn’t mean there was no chaos in each life. That was put aside for the day. It was a ritual as holy as Sunday church or my birth day, Sunday. They gave me a funny card, a multi-colored piñata signed with little love notes from each one of them, and a gift card for the Seaside Motel in Maine where we for years have spent Thanksgiving week and celebrated our wedding anniversary, November 23.  And they paid the tab.

(Robert William, 51,III, Jill Barlow, 54, Lynda Gillespie, 80, John Thomas, 47, Beverley Ann, 55—all Brakeman)

Eighty for me is not the new 60, or 40. Eighty is quiet of soul—glory, gratitude, humor, love, and good looks thrown in. 

2016.08.07 Adorbs!

My teenage granddaughter called me “adorbs.”

After I melted into a ball of grammy-goo, I faced the first challenge: to get my various spell checks NOT to alter it to “adorns” or “adores”! 

The second challenge was whether I should go public with this great compliment. Hell, yes! It’s my 78th birthday today, and this is my present to myself.

What’s better is that my granddaughter, who calls herself Izzy (from Isabella) and who can also be  adorbs, didn’t say this to my face but was heard to say it to her teenage BFF, Sophie. That indirection is what made it such a compliment, not said to flatter or to endear herself to me.
 
              Sophie: “Your Grammy’s pretty cool.”
              Izzy: “Oh yeah, Grammy’s adorbs.”

My daughter reported the conversation, making it all the more sweet. (Izzy and Sophie to her left, at lower right.)

Now why does such a small an goofy thing like this matter to me? It matters to me because it’s got heart and soul, and heart and soul are where Godde lives.  

Today, in fact, is also my beloved husband’s birthday—same day three years’ difference. I have seniority, which occasionally I attempt to assert. He gave me a funny birthday card. It was covered with red and pink squiggles and stars, a real alleluia creation.  It read:

              “Sassy, Classy . . .
           
                   Still kickin’ Assy! 
           
                                                         Now that’s adorbs! 

2012.02.29 Blogoir I

Once upon a time I broke into life with the help of my mother’s pain, sweat and sorrow, and before that my father’s sperm.

Mom had planned to “give” my father a boy, a son (the holy status of sonship is the Bible’s fault—well, also the patriarchal culture’s) who looked just like him and would be named Michael McDonald.

I arrived in obvious feminine form and messed up her plans. But she “adored” me anyway, sometimes too smothery much.

My birth year was 1938, a teetery year between wars but one full of hope for prosperity and a brand new line of Buicks, soon the car of choice for my family. The date was August 7, only 6 weeks before the 1938 hurricane blasted New England, especially Long Island. After the damage was fixed we spent many summers on Long Island, the Hamptons no less.

Being born on a Sunday earned me the legacy of the rhyme, “The child that is born on the Sabbath day is blithe and bonnie and good and gay.” This descriptor did not fit my developing nature—somber, serious, solo, and shy. The rhyme described my mother who tried to bequeath me her own personality, but you really can’t manipulate a “miracle” can you?

My birth place was Manhattan in Leroy Sanitorium, a hospital name that later caused me to ask about my sanity. Spelling is everything.

I have a photo of myself in utero. You can’t see much of me through my mother’s expanded belly. She looks happy with a cigarette in her hand. She’d had 3 miscarriages before I made it out whole, a joy to behold, beautiful, a miracle. I really looked like a squished pink frog covered with black hair.

Love can see through absolutely anyone and make her beautiful.

I managed to look like Dad who gave me my name Lynda Hall Gillespie. But after that it was all down hill. I was as different from Mom as a dill pickle from a jelly donut.

Up to three all adoration was mutual, but at three the pinafore wars began. My mother had a pinafore obsession and I was already an overalls kid. The only good things about pinafores was their wings.

Mom, in spite of the miracle status and the perky personality she’d conferred on me, called me a sour puss. There’s photographic proof of that, too: Mom all smiles and me all scowls. We’re dressed alike in pinafores.

Miracle status didn’t work for me. It took an act of God to naturalize me. It also took a helluva a long time.

2010.12.01 Pregnant With Boobs

It is well to begin the Advent season pregnant, willing to labor for something you have long wanted to birth.

What is your "baby" right now? Mine happens to be Jesus as his is the chapter of my memoir I’m at work to birth.

I first met Jesus, one Christmas in fact. My mother saved the evidence, a Christmas Eve church bulletin of 1946 with my eight year old small neat printing in its corner: Where did he come from? Some days I wish I had photographic evidence for Jesus. Some days I long to see what he really looked like. Some days I wish I could put him neatly between the pages of a scrapbook, saved forever. Men were short then. Maybe he looked more like Danny DeVito, chunky with a swinging perky gait, than El Greco’s long lean bearded version. One thing I’m pretty sure of is he wasn’t blonde! But maybe he looked like my Jewish grandfather I never met.

Thank God I am not pregnant for real. Only spiritually so. Pregnant with curiosity and wonder and a nagging occasional desire for proof.

But in the real world I am led back to remembering my own child birthings, not just the pain of labor and delivery but the thrill of giving it a big push and seeing a tiny bulge of slicked hair begin to emerge, followed by a squished up squinty-eyed little face, then a whole body about the size of a vole, naked and ugly except to parental beholders. A first draft.

In spite of your relief that it’s all over you can’t wait for it to begin, this new life you will love and share, hate and fight, worship and grieve. I have four children, now adults of wonder who belong to their own families and the world, not me.

The only grace birth doesn’t bear is beauty. There is nothing beautiful except in the eye of Love. It’s not a photo op beauty. The moment deserves to be spared advertisement. It deserves modesty. It’s a manger moment, but you don’t think the historical natural scene really looked like the icon do you? But that’s why we have icons to serve as windows into mystery, not reality shows.

So I am aghast that women in this process are being asked to smile for the little handheld devices pointed in their direction when they are sweaty, hair all stringed out, face stripped of all cosmetics. There is nothing glamorous about it, but everyone wants it on record.

Why? Because technology has provided a way that it can be.

Why not? Because this moment goes on record in the heart, not the camera.

What will we not trivialize next in 140 Twitter characters? What is sacrosanct from the eye of the touch screen? Where are the boundaries on techie addiction?

Leave the poor woman and her newborn alone please. Do not try to take away the holy from this picture by sending it out to 100,000 of your “friends” on Facebook. The kid doesn’t even have a real face yet? And his Mommy’s is streaked with strain and puffed with exhaustion.

And the same thing goes for breast cancer. There is nothing glamorous about it. OK so we’ve seen Demi More’s swollen belly and we’ve seen someone else’s noble scarred breastless space. Isn’t that enough showing off? Now we have to wear pink rubber bracelets that say I “heart” boobies, pretend that we are somehow proud to have survived the amputation or to still have intact nipples.

Ok, but only if all this display raises tons of money for research for cures and better treatments. Breast cancer is NOT a women's issue (not meant to be sarcastic)and deserves a campaign that is dignified, not tainted with sexist voyeurism.

Scandal of overexposure, immodest at best, exhibitionist at worst.

A woman priest friend would say, “Jesus would puke!” (Adult Jesus. Baby is entitled.)

Wisdom of the Psalms at Age 72

It’s my 72nd birthday. It’s also my spouse’s birthday but he’s a mere 69. I don’t know what 72 should feel like but I feel fine and glad to be alive and past the paternal death line.

My dad died when he was 71—way too soon for the length of my love.

Ours had been a love-filled but not always peaceful relationship. Dad was an alcoholic and a master putdown artist whom I loved with all my yearning heart. I remember the mix of sorrow and fear I felt. I hadn’t said everything I wanted to and it was about to be too late. Were there enough I love you’s anyway?

The psalmist gave me a birthday present, a prayer line to describe what I had felt and feel now as I age and contemporaries begin to get sick big. Some die.

“IF I WALK INTO THE THICK OF MY SORROW, YOU KEEP ME ALIVE—AGAINST THE WRATH OF MY FEARS." (Psalm 138:8)

Now how true and wise is that!? I don’t know about you but this verse as it is rendered in a new translation by Pamela Greenberg is emotionally true in general and personally.

Think of it. Think of how partnered love and fear are in your heart. Think of how intimate love and sorrow are in your breast. If you truly love someone you immediately fear loss of that love and you touch your sorrow.

Of course we don’t dwell on these feeling connections because we have the psychological capacity for denial, a gift that can hinder one’s capacity to face truth and heal, and also a gift that can shield us from truth before it demands our notice. I for example never knew about alcoholism until I had to know it was a danger. Even when I knew I resisted. I didn’t want to feel the fear and the sorrow of the death of love.

Other translations of 138:8. 1) NRSV Bible: “Though I walk in the midst of trouble, you preserve me against the wrath of my enemies; you stretch out your hand, and your right hand delivers me.

2) Book of Common Prayer: Though I walk in the midst of trouble, you keep me safe; you stretch forth your hand against the fury of my enemies; your right hand shall save me.

3)The Psalter, Liturgy Training Publications: When I face an opponent, you keep me alive. You reach out your hand, your right hand saves me.

The difference is marked. Greenberg’s translation internalizes the prayer language. ENEMY is translated WRATH OF MY FEARS.

I find it true that when I feel injured and deeply sorrowed by something I don’t understand, something I think unjust, I feel afraid, imagine all kinds of enemies and blame externals first, then myself.

How do you cope with such times? Does Godde by whatever name keep you alive? How?

I pray volumes over days and months, often in writing. It brings me back to myself and to Godde who casts no blame but simply listens and keeps me ALIVE AGAINST THE WRATH OF MY FEARS so I can WALK INTO THE THICK OF MY SORROWS.