Happy Birthday, Baby Girl
An ode to my late wife, an amazing healer and teacher
Today would have been my wife’s 80th birthday, were she still on planet earth.
We were together for 34 years minus one day, and officially, legally married for fewer than six years.
I miss her every minute of every hour of every day of every week of every year. I miss her smile and her hugs. I miss her wisdom and common sense. I miss her meatloaf and pecan pies. Her pecan pies won praise even from Texans, who prize such Southern delicacies and are damn finicky about them.
My consolation is knowing in my bones that one day I will be with her again. I have a few stories to tell before I go, however.
One of these tales is about Jana Lynn Simons. Born in Fort Worth, Texas, in November 1945 to Marvin Nelson Simons and Evelyn Wilkerson Simons. Jana used to joke that her father said she was his only birthday present that year (they shared the same birth date.)
She remained nameless for three days while the family argued about what to call her. Her beloved granny (father’s mother) wanted to name her Sarah but her dad saw a newspaper ad for Purses by Jana, and she finally had a name.
Jana’s childhood was bleak, filled with what we now would call abuse. Her mother decided that Jana was her housemaid. As young as six years old, Jana was washing and ironing the family’s clothes and scrubbing floors.
Jana was the one getting up at night to give her much younger sisters (by six and twelve years) their bottles or to change their diapers. She was their live-in babysitter, responsible for them but with no authority. Small wonder they grew up resenting her.
At age 18, just after high school graduation, she packed the suitcase her parents gave her as a graduation gift and left home for good.
Jana also joked that her resume looked like it was for three different people. She took a long time deciding what she wanted to do when she finally grew up.
She worked for Eastern Airlines as a ground hostess stationed in San Antonio during HemisFair ’68. In this post she met all kinds of celebrities of yesteryear. She instantly liked Bob Hope, but not Elizabeth Taylor (cue the eye roll). The crazy woman wore a fur coat in sizzling San Antonio during the summer.
Jana worked for a credit union and John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth. She worked for Pizza Hut, rising to be the first female mini-area supervisor back in the 1970s, and Burger King.
Returning to Fort Worth, she owned her own restaurant and did catering for a time, until her partner stole all the money in her business account and vanished.
That brought her to her knees in every sense of the word. She met her spirit guides in her darkest hour and her life transformed.
Then she transformed my life and the lives of the students and clients who sought her help. Always she tried to show them options and fill them with hope, just as she did for me.
I watched in awe as she honed in immediately on what was really troubling them. I wanted those intuitive skills badly. To some extent, I have acquired them. Always a work in progress.
Had I not met Jana and, more importantly, decided to blend our lives together as business and life partners, I would not be writing this today. My fears would have consumed me long ago and my physical body would have died.
Jana taught me and many others Sunan storyhealing. Although her physical presence is gone from this world, I still use those skills to heal myself and try to help others.
Happy 80th, Baby Girl. See you again one day.