(Jan. 30, 2023)

My half birthday this year
falls on a Mom Monday,
so I spend the afternoon driving
around the one who long ago
coached me through the sticky
business of clutches and shifting,
who carried and birthed me
64-and-a-half years ago, who
passed on her love for, among
other things, tuna melts at Mel’s
followed by ice cream—

both of us chalking up our half
birthdays this month, because
your years are your wealth, darlin’,
as a friend of ours used to say,
and not everybody gets so many.

When you got ’em, you celebrate ’em,
the half birthdays, especially at the end
of the 10 darkest weeks of winter,
as the sun now lingers a wee bit longer
through the diner window, haloing
the 91-and-a-half-year-old and her
bowl of mint chip,

even if, as my father might have joked,
we old gals ain’t what we used to be—
in so many ways, we’re even better.