Happy Birthday Mom

Yesterday, October 6th was my mom's birthday. Cynthia Dedinas, nee Typinski, was born in New Kensington, Pennsylvania on the 6th of October, 1937. Her parents were immigrants from Poland. She was the last of ten children, eight of whom lived out of infancy.

World War II shaped so much of her life. The attack on Pearl Harbor came when she was four years old and V-J day occured just before she turned eight. For a child the years between four and eight are a virtual eternity. Her brothers, my uncles, Raymond and Robert, were seventeen and eighteen in 1945. They joined up and served under General MacArthur. My grandfather cried as he signed the paper allowing Uncle Raymond Henry Typinski to join at age seventeen. But both boys returned safe, by the grace of God.

As was the case with most people of Polish stock, my mother was raised a devout Catholic. She served as a nun in a convent for six years from the age of sixteen until twenty-two. And while I am of the Evangelical bent today, her and my father did raise me up well in the way of Christ and in the end I did not depart from it. I am greatful always for this.

People don't realize how things used to be. Liberals flatulate about "white males" but fail to realize that when my grandfather moved to a new neighborhood in Detroit, the local housing covenant didn't want any Pollacks there. So much for the notion of white skin privilege.

I was born on July 28, 1969. My parents weren't hippies, they had a real life. I was born about two weeks before the Sharon Tate murders. I cannot imagine how that incident must have affected my mother. Sharon Tate's baby would have been a few weeks younger than me. What I have to thank my mother for the most is her remaining uncorrupted by the insanity of the late 1960s and early 1970s. I know it made a difference in my life, in days when I tottered on the edge of the abyss. She was a real woman who loved her family. She and my dad were lovers of knowledge. Until near adulthood, I assumed every child grew up in a house with as many books as a library in it.

I owe a great deal to my mother and I am very greatful. I hope God will watch over her and protect her in her life. Happy Birthday Mom, and many more.