Birthdays and Moms

By Roy Ortega

My mom, my sister Etna and me circa 1955.

When it comes to birthdays, my standing request of my family is that they not fuss too much over me. A simple lunch or a round of drinks is a perfectly fine celebration for me. Throughout my life, I have never desired to be the center of attention and I certainly don't relish the idea of a band of bored waiters singing to me in front of total strangers in a restaurant. Save that for a 5-year old, not a 65-year old. I also politely ask that no one spend their hard-earned dollars buying me a gift. I no longer wear ties and I have plenty of socks and undies. Frankly, if I can't eat it or drink it, I'd rather not have it. I know I'm sounding a little curmudgeonly, but I'm a kind and happy one.

On my birthdays, my thoughts are always with someone else - my mother. In a real sense, it's her birthday too. It's the day she gave birth to me and I believe mothers should always celebrate the day together with their children. It doesn't matter how many children, each birth should be celebrated equally with Mom.  Moms should receive gifts, balloons, a birthday cake and lunch at Luby's in equal acknowledgement of a very special day.

Even though she has been gone from us for nearly 16-years, my mother Rebecca Ramos Ortega is never far from my thoughts even on a normal day. I allow myself to think both solemnly and happily about the morning of July 19, 1953. Solemnly, because of how difficult it must have been to give birth to a child in a far less ideal circumstance than kids born today. Happily, because I also think of my Dad Salvador who I'm told was so happy, he invited the whole neighborhood over and served up cigars, tacos and Falstaff beer.

I was born in the back room of this house. It no longer exists.

You see, I was not born in a hospital. I was born in the back room of our small wooden frame house at 1030 Kendalia Avenue in South San Antonio, Texas. It was not uncommon for doctors to make home visits and deliver babies at home back then.

My birth certificate shows I was born at  8:30 a.m. and was attended by a physician whose chicken-scratch signature is impossible to read. I'll never know his name.

I think about what it was like on that day. July in the early 1950s must have been brutal for people living in Texas. Summers in Texas are unbearably hot with stifling 100-degree heat and humidity heavy enough to drown a pig.

Before the advent of refrigerated air conditioning in homes, people suffered mightily through the hot summer months. Their only comfort was an open window that welcomed every manner of mosquitoes and an assortment of other unidentifiable bugs. An oscillating fan did nothing more than swirl hot, humid air through a house. On my birthday, I think about the misery my mother must have gone through giving birth to me on that day.

I am convinced that my life-long aversion to heat and humidity was born with me on that day.