With my Daewoo radio tuned habitually to NPR, the brief blurb about today marking the 60th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth's reign sent my mind wandering as I emerged for my morning mountain hike.

So Elizabeth wasn't quite Queen when I was born... the stuttering monarch portrayed in The King's Speech was still on the throne.  That means he was alive to see his grandson born. That much I know without checking Wikipedia.

My mind now flashed back a little over a year ago when I was visiting the Amazon. Over dinner a middle aged Australian couple was talking with a twenty-something Canadian couple about Prince Charles--expressing how sorry they felt for him being so overlooked in the current royal family and remarking how OLD (ancient) he was. Both couples laughed and wondered just how OLD Charles was.

I kept quiet for a few minutes.... before letting them know EXACTLY how old he was.

For he was born the SAME year that I was born.

I even knew that his birth weight was 7 lbs. 10 oz.

Why the hell should I know such trivia? Because my Mom had told this to me when I was growing up--perhaps more than once. The impression I had had was that she was equating me with Prince Charles.

The implication that it was just by chance that I happened to be born to a modest, unassuming Midwestern U.S. couple and not to British royalty. Same year... same weight... I could have been a prince if Fate had intervened--a modern day Mark Twain Prince and the Pauper scenario.

I did think it a bit bizarre that I should remember such a remark from over five decades ago, but this morning I figured it out.

It certainly wasn't logical for my mother to try planting a dream of being a prince for me--my childhood dreams were more typical American ones like playing second base for the St. Louis Cardinals. Being a prince was NOT even remotely in MY dreams.

But I can imagine now that my Mother harbored her own dreams of being a Princess. THAT is why she equated my birth with Charles. She had her first child the SAME year as Princess Elizabeth gave birth to her son and both babies weighed exactly the same!

Mom never talked about her dreams much. She was like the stoic Midwestern farm wife in Grant Woods' American Gothic, who consistently practiced self denial. We'd have to read her body language to discern likes and dislikes. It took me over 60 years to realize that she harbored American princess dreams, and I know that she would deny this if I express this openly to her.

 But I can now imagine her averting her eyes, shaking her head, turning a tad crimson, and rushing off to another room ...but with a slight American Gothic smile.