For memoir group on March 11, 2024
My Birthday
My birthday is in mid-July. Before I was school age, this was fine, and my mother noted that it never rained on my birthday so the celebrations were outside in the backyard. The cake always had a doll in the middle and the cake was her skirt and bodice. I thought they were so pretty and was quite proud of them.
Along with the cake, she gave the other children a gift. The gift came from a warehouse out in West Duluth that I surely visited once because the image of a dark, cavernous place with a wooden floor and wooden bins is in my memory. I think I must have been too little to be able to see over the side of the bins because I have no memory of the toys at all.
These birthday parties must have gone on into elementary school as well because there are some pictures that include not only my cousins and the neighborhood children, but classmates who didn’t live close by. The most “important” guest in retrospect, was Bobby Zimmerman. Why was Bob Dylan at my birthday party when I was about 4 years old? I thought that he might be a relative, but I can’t find any last name from his family that matches any from mine. Most likely his mother or father are related to a relative or friend of my family and perhaps they were in town (we lived in Duluth, the Zimmermans lived about an hour away in Hibbing). Bob would have been 11 or 12 so I’m sure he would not have been interested in 4 year old’s, but cake and ice cream are always welcome treats. This is as close as I come to stardom.
The later school-years meant that I wasn’t one of those lucky kids who got to have a birthday party in class. And after age 12, when my parents bought the cabin, I was alone with one or both of them at the lake. I have no memory of any celebration, but as I am the only child and I was quite loved and my mother loved to make cakes, I’m guessing they must have celebrated it. As far as gifts go, nothing that rises to that level of special has made it into long-term memory.
Through my teens and all the way to my 50’s, I have no idea what I did for my birthdays. I know what I didn’t do. I didn’t ask anyone to do anything special for me. I was often annoyed when my cousin would set up a party for her birthday at a restaurant and those of us who were invited were expected to pay for her meal along with giving her a gift. While I found that rather rude, it’s exactly the same thing my sister-in-law did. Seems I’m the only one who thinks this isn’t the nicest way to treat your friends.
After1995 I’ve spent every summer at the cabin on Cadotte Lake in the Superior National Forest in Northern Minnesota, about two hours south of Canada. It became mine a few years earlier when my parents felt they could no longer spend the summer there. Anyway, starting in 2013, I decided that for my birthday, I’d do something I might have thought of, but never did. I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to drive to Beaver Bay, on the shores of Lake Superior, about 35 miles away, and stop at every creek on the way, take a photo of the identifying sign and check out the creek for future picnic possibilities. I’m wild about picnics. So starting with Apple Creek, there was: Toimi Creek, Petrell Creek, Nelson Creek, Store Creek, Breda Creek, Maki Creek, Murphy Creek, Sullivan Creek, the Cloquet River, W. Branch of the Beaver River, Big Thirty-Nine Creek, Little Thirty-Nine Creek, E. Branch of the Beaver River and finally, Lake Superior. Minnesota, the Land of 10,000 Lakes has probably four times that many creeks. This trip didn’t have the most auspicious start because shortly after I pulled to the side of the road by Apple Creek, a State Trooper pulled up, got out of his car and asked if I was okay. “Yes, it’s my birthday and I’m stopping at every creek between here and Lake Superior”. The look on his face was, “Okay lady, you’re obviously crazy, but you do you”. When I got to Beaver Bay, I went to the ice cream shop and treated myself to two scoops of black licorice ice cream. Yummy!
Every year since, I’ve done something on this order. I’ve gone to the farmer’s market in Finland, Minnesota, to Palisade Head on the North Shore of Lake Superior, which is 1,1 billion year old and 335 feet above the lake (what a gorgeous view), to a Finnish pioneer homestead quite close by that’s been well preserved from about the 1850’s, to Black Beach, which is really black because the sand is made from the tailings of taconite that are mined pretty close to me. Taconite is a low grade of iron ore and all that remains in those mines now that the rich ore has been removed and turned into steel. Sugar Loaf cove that was used as a holding area for cut trees before they were loaded on boats and taken to saw mills.
Northern Minnesota has been famous for natural resources since its discovery and even today that’s true. The latest find is helium which has been found about 40 miles north and west of me. Happily for me who doesn’t want to live there full time and isn’t looking for a mining job, the current Federal administration has been able to stop the plans for copper mining. There has never been a copper mine that hasn’t leaked arsenic into the surrounding watershed. The dilemma is that these are very good paying jobs and the area has very little else available.
This past summer I went to the Sax-Zim Bog, a preserve that is most famous for the owls people frequently photograph in the winter.
And this coming summer – 2024? So far I don’t know. Sometimes I use Google maps to view the area and see if anything interesting pops up. That’s how I found the bog.
I think there are two important things about this exercise: first I honor myself, which I think is important, and second I learn more about the area, it’s history and it’s beauty.
