A ne'er forgotten birthday.

June arrived today. It's the 1st. I just love the 1st of June. As a child, I would look forward to this day so much, because it signified two things: 1) summertime and 2) my birthday month was upon us. But the 1st is special for another reason. Always has been. It also marks the birthday of my grandfather, Dr. Henry J. Cabeceiras, Jr.

Today, he would have been 80.

He has been gone for the better part of a decade, and not a June 1st rolls around that I don't think of him. That I don't wonder what it would be like if he were still around. Not a June 1st rolls around that I don't wish he was.


He was smart in an unassuming way. He exuded a powerful, yet quiet, confidence - a quality I have always admired. He didn't brag about his multitude of accomplishments - he just tucked them away and focused on the present. He was a masterful physician and delivered babies for over thirty years...present company included. He coached his five sons' baseball teams. He didn't have a rush mode...just steadily kept his pace and brought the world around him to his speed. He was a true patriarch - a pillar of strength, fortitude, grace and cohesion - for our family. We have never recovered from losing him.

My grandfather was a man of very few words, but almost anyone who heard him speak remembers exactly the words he chose to say.

Paw Paw and I shared a special connection. He had time for me always, and let me know often how proud he was that I was his granddaughter. He never (not once) turned me down for a game of checkers, and he beamed wildly when I beat him. When I was 8, he taught me the Infield-Fly Rule and then gave me $100 when I remembered it a year later. He loved it that I played golf...loved it more that I played on scholarship in college...and loved it most that I did it and carried a 4.0 until my last year at Ole Miss. I know that he saw something of himself - or at the very least, something of the direction he hoped this family would go - in me. I will treasure that knowledge for the rest of my life.

Last year, when I found out that I was expecting a baby boy, there was only one name that we even considered for him. Only one name that I could give to the person I hoped would continue the legacy built by generations...and seen by me in my grandfather. That name was his...
Now it is his...

...and I know that, were he still with us, he would find unending joy in my Henry on this, his 80th birthday.