A Mother's Remembrances to her Son on his Birthday.

Aaron and Claudia

This just goes to show that no matter how much things change, they really do remain the same on so many different levels. I am recoding a few thoughts in honor of my son Aaron's upcoming birthday on Feb. 14th (Valentine's Day).

Aaron will be 30 yrs old this year on his birthday (oh boy! am I old). He was 15 yrs old when he "came out" to me, so his age has doubled since that time. . . .Fifteen years have passed - it is just a way of marking time.

We've joked over the years about the pink, heart-shaped birthday cakes I made for him the first few years of his life, when he was very little, and also the fact that his Dad and I attended a Barry Manilow concert when I was pregnant with Aaron, and debated if they had any affect on his latter realization that he was gay. . . .it was just us being silly. We both now know that Aaron was born gay . . . we just didn't know it then.

I knew he was a sensitive little boy. I remember carrying him outside on warm summer evenings, with him dressed in his summer jammies, and singing our goodnights to the stars and the moon. On this particular night, we were ending a chorus of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Stars" when I noticed big tears rolling down his cheeks, and when I asked him what was wrong . . . .he didn't know, and just buried his face against my shoulder.

Something happened a couple of weeks ago to make me realize how much I had grown and changed since that time 15 yrs ago when Aaron introduced me to what would be my new perception of who he was. I didn't think much of it at the time . . . I was simply asking Aaron if I could order him and his partner, Steve, some calendars for the new year, and if so, what would they like to have? Aaron told me that I could get him a weather trivia calendar, like I had in the past, and that Steve said he would like something cowboy-themed. That actually sounded easy enough, and I knew Steve liked country-western music . . . but then cowboy-themed, huh, what exactly did that mean? I got busy looking online at the Barnes and Noble website and the first cowboy calendar I found showed a picture of a cowboy riding his horse in the rain on the cover . . . not bad, but somehow I didn't think I had found it yet. For those of you who don't know, Barnes and Noble work in conjunction with Amazon.com to handle their online orders. Before I knew what was happening, I was linked to a page that showed "COLT" calendars for all different themes, and bingo . . . there was a cowboy calendar with a bare-chested fellow in a cowboy hat on the cover; but for some reason, I couldn't get a view of the other monthly photos. I thought it looked a bit risquŽ, but might be just the ticket for what Steve had in mind.

A few nights later, during a phone conversation, I told my son what I had done . . . . . he relayed the information to Steve, and I believe his response was something like "Hot dog! Naked cowboys!" I think it was then that Aaron asked if he could change his order for the weather trivia calendar. If someone would've told me at the time my son came out to me that 15 years later I would be ordering naked cowboy calendars for him and his partner, I would've never believed it.