Happy Birthday to Me!

It finally got here -- my 53rd birthday. Yikes! How did this happen? Who is that old lady in the mirror looking back at me? I was talking with my former roomie from BYU this afternoon, and we both agreed that whenever we talk it feels as if the years have melted away and we're 19 again. Neat how friends can do that for you.

I was thinking this morning of how I came to get my Irish name. Maureen Lee is Irish for Mary Elizabeth. I much prefer the Irish version. My dad was in the Air Force and was transferred to Japan during the Korean War. He was stationed at a base outside of Tokyo called Feamcom. My mother did not go with him. While he was there waiting for her to save up enough money to join him, he got a little bank and wrote Maureen's Diaper Service on it. All the guys in his platoon signed their names to it, and they would put their loose change into it at the end of the day.

When my mother arrived he moved out of the platoon and they rented a little house in the town of Tachikawa and he brought the little piggy bank with him and presented it to her. "Who's Maureen?" she asked. She got pregnant at Christmas and the following September I was born. My Dad just liked the name Maureen Lee. To this day whenever he addresses anything to me that's what he uses; the full name.

I always liked that story. Fifty-three years later it's still fun to remember that my dad was planning for me before my mom was even there in Japan.