BIRTHDAY REMINDERS [F, 3-5-21]

 CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter

BIRTHDAY REMINDERS  [F, 3-5-21]

I wonder now why I was so in love with Margaret O’Brien when I was in grade school. I saw a current picture of her on-line. I mean, she looks like an old woman.

She is only 20 days older than I, the same as the late Joe Frazier, of The Chad Mitchell Trio, the best folk-singing group of the 1960s. You wouldn’t think that 20 days would make her look so much older than I, but...

I was talking on the phone with Joe one day and asked him if he remembered that he was so much older than I. “How can I forget it when you remind me all the time?” he said. I probably wouldn’t say anything to Margaret about her being so much older, being in love with her for so long, and all.

I really fell in love with Margaret when we were in 5^th grade. I saw a photo of her in one of those little newspapers for kids they gave out at school. She was holding the same 5^th grade textbook that my class used. That sealed it. The same book! How much more in common could we have? It was destiny, I was sure, that we should meet and….

I wasn’t quite sure what would happen once we met, but if I had known then that she was making more money than Judy Garland for “Meet Me in St. Louis,” I would have tried a lot harder to get acquainted. In fact, she was at age six one of the highest paid stars in Hollywood. That’s a good quality in a girlfriend.

It’s surely best for Margaret that she doesn’t know what she missed out on, but it’s just as well that Margaret and I went our separate ways, for I ended up marrying a younger woman. Her birthday is tomorrow. Helen is fourteen months younger than Margaret and me. How can I forget it, when she keeps reminding me?

John Robert McFarland