Happy Birthday

In honor of my 73rd birthday (today), here is some recycled FITK birthday content:

Woo-hoo! A party!


Kevin, Cathy, Me, Sister Jean, Frank, Kirby and Keith

I was turning seven, these might be the happiest pictures of me as a child in existence. We had quite a few of the neighborhood kids there, enough so that my mother bowed out of the preparations, letting my father cater the whole affair—cake and ice cream. Lots of ice cream.


Frank, Cathy, Kevin, Me, Kirby, Jeannie, Delroy, Arlen (standing)

If Arlen doesn’t look so happy, it may be due to the fact his family had never had ice cream (they might not have had a refrigerator, there were still ice-boxes in use then) and my dad let him eat as much as he wanted. Arlen ended up getting his stomach pumped.

That was the last birthday party I ever had.

Another Birthday Story:

Went for a drive.

In a mist.

100% humidity.

Swampy.

All the summer smells of decay and growth, in suspended animation during the recent dry spell, have emerged; co-mingled essences, heady stuff, cloying, bringing me back, back to a crazy bike ride, on my 30th birthday.

80 miles, almost straight north, leaving downtown at 10 p.m., picking up highway 65 in Northeast Minneapolis... a straight shot to Mora, Minnesota, and then five miles north of that to a log cabin on an old homestead. We had been renting it for the summer; the Weaver and me and baby makes three. I had been stuck in town all week working but this was Friday. A storm had preceded me- a big light show in the northern sky, but I wouldn't catch up to it.

Around Ham Lake the air became calm, a miasma from the swamps was seeping onto the road, like Dracula entering a window in an old horror movie.

It felt good.

In Cambridge I stopped at a road house, the drunken band was plodding its way through a Creedence medley, I drank a Coke and headed back out on the road. It was midnight. I was feeling a bit chafed, I had a long-tailed shirt on, so I thought I'd stow the shorts for a while. The old leather Brooks saddle had molded itself to my anatomy years ago but this was a closer type of intimacy.

About ten miles of this “commando cycling” dropped my core temperature enough so that it seemed prudent to regroup, as it were. Re-donning the shorts, I pedaled alone, not even a bar-closer drove by. I finally pulled into the cabin about 3 a.m., wiped myself down and crawled into bed. It was dead still, and silent, save for the gentle sounds of the sleeping Weaver and, in the crib, the baby.

Outside, the dew covered the grass and all was still.

One Hundred Gifts A Day

Went to a birthday party Saturday.

I guess it was partially for me, although I've pretty much given up on my personal birthday scene. It is fun to get a gift out of the blue though, and I get plenty of those. A smile, a hug, or just an unstated shift in body language that says: “It’s good to be here with you.”

Girls in their summer clothes.

The chirping of small children as they play.

The ferals, who tolerate me, watch me with interest, and don't hiss.

An e-mail from the other side of the world with an unexpected (and funny) joke.

A small job offer.

A neighborhood group meeting where someone opens up with me one-on-one.

A sense of well-being, if only for a minute or two.

A bike ride through the prairie grass with the fiery sun sinking in the west.

The skinny moon appearing after the sun goes down.

One hundred gifts a day, given with no thought of a return.

Thanks.