Happy Birthday, Gina!

Today is Gina's birthday. Man, hard to believe she's 15. Before long she'll be wanting to learn to drive and maybe thinking about colleges ... 10 minutes ago she was a tiny little kid.

I just exchanged notes with her; she's home sick today with the flu, which she's had for a few days, and had to postpone a birthday party with her friends until next week. Poor Ginabean. We'll have our own little celebration here this weekend.

"Live it up," as Grandma Rita would say.

I can sure remember the day Gina was born. Greta and I were living in a cool old Craftsman house by Green Lake here in Seattle, and we left for the hospital in a nervous hurry in the middle of the night. No need for the rush, as it turned out. Greta was in labor for an astonishing 30 hours before the doctors gave up and proclaimed that Bean was never going to "make the turn" in the birth canal. They went for a cesarean instead, which was trouble-free. She was a healthy baby, with a big ol' Matassa head: I forget the measurement now but they told us it was the largest head ever recorded at that particular hospital. Sheesh, no wonder she wouldn't come out.

As all this was going on, someone broke into our house. As I related here once before, my former boss and friend Dave Boardman went to secure the place and kept me posted by phone. Some things were missing, but it looked like the burglars had been interrupted mid-crime. In fact, our TV and some other stuff were out at the curb awaiting pickup. If memory serves I somehow got in trouble for going home to clean up while Greta was still recovering from surgery, but the details are starting to fade. All was fine in the end.

At 15, Gina is a good kid, with a lot of promise. She's smart, funny, pretty and, best of all, an independent thinker. She reads and writes a little and draws, all well. She has a strong sense of style, currently tilting toward flapper-era fashion. She has a lot of friends but doesn't strike me as a crowd-follower. She's a huge movie fan with strong opinions about film styles and scores (which she collects). With her sister and some of her friends she can quote movie dialog at length. She's obsessed with Johnny Depp -- and not, she insists, just because he's beautiful.

She wants to be a director someday, and I won't be at all surprised when she is.

So, happy birthday, Gina. You'll feel better soon, we'll live it up this weekend. I'm proud of you.

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(The above picture, a couple of months old, was lifted from Gina's myspace page.)