HAPPY BIRTHDAY, CHRISTINA!

I am constantly amazed at the woman my daughter Christina has grown up to be, yet I am forever remembering her as a child -- all giggles, all caring, all kindness, all determination, sharp as a tack and (sometimes) pricky as a pear, and a never-ending fount of hugs and kisses.  I remember my father -- a great judge of character -- turning to me when Christina was three, and saying, "Don't ever bet against her."   She was Christy until the first grade; then she came home and informed us that her name was Christina...and so it was.  As she got older, she developed the nickname Bink, for reasons that still elude me.  And so it came to be:  she was Christina to the world and Bink to the family.

Christina is somewhat shy.  She took piano lessons for a year and had to play at an annual recital with her teacher.  As she left the stage, she turned to Kitty and said in a loud and disdaining voice, "Don't you ever do that to me gain!"  So we didn't.  Yet music stayed with her.  She played clarinet in her high school and college bands.  She played the fife in what we have been told was the only all-girl's fife and drum corps in the country.  Kitty gave her my 60-year old banjo and Christina had it refurbished and will begin learning to play it as soon as she finds the time.

Finding the time to do things has always been difficult because she has always had a lot on her plate.  When she married Walt, he had only a high school degree.  She urged him to get a college degree and also to get computer train, which led him to ever-increasing positions of responsibility and management.  The majority of her efforts, though, went to raising Mark and Erin, who have become two of the most accomplished human beings I have ever known; Christina always stepped up to give them every possible opportunity to reach their full natural potential.  Fourteen years ago, she and Walt fostered Jack when he was just six weeks old, who was born to a drug-addicted mother and spent the first six weeks of his life in rehab at Washington Children's.  It took nearly two years for the state of Maryland to sever the legal ties of Jack's mother, who had many arrests for various charges, came from a criminal family, and had three other children from three other (sometimes unknown) fathers, allowing Christina and Walt to adopt him and for us to officially welcome him into the family.  Patience and love and more patience were needed to raise Jack:  he was on a feeding tube for more than eight years, had a number of emotional problems, and is still a few years socially behind his peers.  But Jack has become a loving, kind soul with a quick wit and vivid imagination, and while there are still difficulties, Jack has become an amazing human being and we could not be any prouder of him or love him any more.

Christina's determination has always been one of her main strengths.  While attending George Washington University as a freshman, she accompanied a friend who was interested to a meeting of the university's Tae Kwon Do club, and became interested herself.  As she studies and practiced the art, she would often hit plateaus, which would often last for months until she overcame them and advanced to the next step.  In this manner of advancing through fits and jerks, she eventually became a Black Belt and was elected president of the club -- the first non-graduate student to hold that office.  After graduation, she got a job driving for an ambulance company, which led to becoming first an emergency medical technician, then a paramedic, running rescue for the county for a decade.  She doesn't brag about the lives she saved, nor the extreme danger she occasionally faced in that job.  She started working as an emergency room technician at Fairfax Hospital in Virginia; the ER doctors there were happy when Christina was working their shifts because they knew that with Christina there, things would wok smoothly (other ER techs were evidently no where near as organized as she was).  she was on duty on 9-11 when every hospital and emergency room in the greater-DC area was placed on high alert; it was only when the day went on and no victims appeared that the staff realized how devastating the attack on the Pentagon was.  One day we got a call and Christina asked us calmly to watch her kids because her ER was now in quarantine.  A passenger who spoke no English was admitted after arriving on an international flight; the only words she could speak in English were "hemorhagic fever";  this was at a time when Ebola was wiping out African villages, and many other hemorhagic fevers (Lassa, Marburg, Yellow Fever) could be just as bad.  Christina and the rest of the staff continued working calmly, trying not to let this affect them adversely, while Kitty's hair grew gray from worry.  After twelve hours, it was determined to be Denge Fever and a shout of joy went out throughout the ER -- still dangerous, but far less serious and less communicable than many of the other options.  Christina is our duck -- floating gently and gracefully on the water while below the surface, the feet are paddling like crazy.

She switched careers and qualified to be an echocardiogram technician for many years, lugging a five hundred pound machine through hospital corridors.  This was another job she was amazingly good at, often discovering abnormalities that some doctors overlooked.  (But some doctors are poopy-heads, something that Christina learned early on and the one thing that made decide not pursue that as a career.)  During this time, she also taught classes in cardio stenography at George Washington University.  She made a complete switch about a dozen years ago when she trained to become a sign language interpreter; for the past decade she worked at local schools one-on-one with deaf students and being an extra hand assisting the classroom teachers.  Budget cuts earlier this year found her out of a job,  but she rebounded quickly and is now a newly-minted police dispatcher for a local community.  Throughout her adult life, Christina has work in positions that have helped people in ways large and small.

Christina's sense of responsibility also extends to her animals.  when she married Walt, she never expected to house and care for so many animals -- at one time eighteen, from dogs and cats to pigmy goats, a Russian tortoise, several bearded dragons, a south american tegu, and various snakes and a black widow spider.  With the passage of time, some of these have moved on to animal heaven and some have moved out with Mark and Erin, but she still has two dogs, two cats, the tortoise, and a bearded dragon.  Earlier this hear, she and Walt trained for and were qualified as official Animal Rescuers; thus far they have only been called to rescue a baby armadillo but they stand ever-ready for the next call.

All in all, Christina is one of the most amazing persons it has been my privilege to know.  I wear my pride for her as a badge of honor.

Oh, and she really likes kimchi and Thai food.

As I look back, I cannot help but remember her as a child, full of wonder and promise.  I guess that's why this song always brings a tear to my eye.  And I know that Kitty and I did a good job.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urq8m_XBxzA

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Happy Birthday, Pretty One.