Liverpool, A Connection, and A Birthday

Liverpool. Statue of John on Mathew Street

I’ve just turned 65. This is, of course, a reason to celebrate what with Medicare and its benefits as well as all the fabulous discounts offered to seniors. And I have been celebrating. Probably too much.

However, reaching 65 is important for a very different, personal reason.

In April of this year, R and I were in Liverpool, a stop on our cruise itinerary. When we initially booked, I gave the stop little thought, beyond considering it would be cool to visit Beatles sights — and it was. But once at home as my thoughts drifted over our recent travels, I remembered something important about Liverpool. After a little digging, I found the passenger list for the Tuscania, the ship that carried my grandparents and my mother from the UK to New York. Their departure port — Liverpool. August 1915. R and I had visited their departure port, perhaps our cruise ship docked in the same area as the Tuscania. As a cruise ship tourist, I connected to a piece of my family history.

While 65 is not old old, it is senior level. I’ve now lived 10 years longer than my mother did, thanks to a healthier lifestyle, modern meds, and a growing body of medical research on diseases and aging.

Katherine in WWII, probably somewhere in Italy. I know who gave me my love of adventure. Can you imagine what a transatlantic crossing was like in 1915?

I made it to 65 and I’m embracing it and looking forward to …..whatever.

Happy birthday.

Another Year

Katherine after WWII

I grow nostalgic around my birthday, as I guess many people do. Not nostalgic for my youth, though I wouldn’t mind being younger, healthier, and nimbler. I feel nostalgic for what I don’t know, a kind of regret about not having all the information.

With this 63rd birthday, I have lived eight years beyond the age when my own mother died. In my adulthood, that’s one way I’ve calculated my birthdays.

The portrait photo above of my mother was taken, I believe, after WWII, before she left city life and moved to Williamson, NY, my father’s rural farm community hometown. I’ve wondered how and really why she made such a decision but people made all kinds of puzzling decisions after the war in an effort to regain stability and normalcy and create lives.

This photo shows my parents — Katie, or Katherine, or Kitty as her mother called her, and my father, in New Jersey where they lived and worked before transitioning to Williamson.

As I combed through my box of old photos, I searched for pictures of them in the 1960s, posing as a couple but found not a one. Why are there no couple photos? Was one of them always behind the camera while the other stiffly posed with their kids?

There is much I’d like to know about my mother and her early years and about her immigrant parents, from Scotland and England. The three of them boarded the Tuscania in Liverpool for their crossing to the USA and settled in Philadelphia. To help with that pursuit, my husband of almost 37 years gave me a DNA test for my birthday. What’s more romantic than saliva and information?

And finally, a photo of Katherine in her later years in deep grandma conversation with her first grandson, Scott. She lived long enough to meet the first two grandchildren but did not have the privilege of meeting the others nor the privilege of meeting my husband. Can’t wait to learn what my DNA and time researching on Ancestry.com will yield.