Looking Back

I'm not one for reminiscing, and this is as close as I'll come. I'm looking back one day to 3 January 2011

I'm happy to report that on this day, my friend and colleague Richard S. Wheeler did NOT have to have a stent put in. His doctors assured him there is no blockage, and he told me he has a photo of his very clear arteries. Yea! He's back blogging and working on his next book (number 70-something).

I am, of course, happy for my friends health; but MY memory of the day is that it was my first child's fortieth birthday. 40! Hmm. Don't do the math, cuz it won't work. I didn't have my kids until most of my friends children were in elementary school.

Anyway, I started thinking about birthdays and how we celebrate them. Very much needed in times (and countries today) when child mortality was high, when surviving to your next birthday was cause for celebration. I suppose that survival is part of it now, but in our society, not as hard to achieve. But I don't see why, after a kid is 25 or so (most often has a job and health insurance and probably his own place to live--maybe a family) parents are still expected to gift said offspring and make a big deal about a birthday. It really should be the other way around. Adults should celebrate their birthdays with cards and gifts to their moms, in particular, and dads, if they hung around for the birth occasion. A great big THANK YOU for giving them life. Or maybe a bucket of ashes and wonderment why the parents decided to have progeny at all.

I didn't do a lot for my kid's 40th. On Facebook, I put up a picture of him when he was a few hours old, (taken by his dad who did hang around) and tagged him in the photo. I wrote, Happy Birthday. But even today, I still wonder how he is catching up to me in age. I mean, I don't feel a day over fifty, so how the h*** can he be forty?