a day, a year, a life

O happy day.

This might just be your hardest fought birthday yet. But I’d hardly call you an old man. As I awoke this morning, I tried to imagine you gathering your gear for an end-of-season Vasa visit. I thought about how it must feel to strap boot to ski and enter the soon greening woods. I tried to feel the snow glide beneath my own feet as I saw the solemn Michigan skies above.

I couldn’t begin to feel what it must be wonder if this ski and the next might be the last, the last of the season, but surely not the last of a life. The snow will return before long.

I realized recently that I’m old enough now -- the wrinkles can attest -- to remember your life at my age. And as I flipped through ancient imagines this morning, I tried to see me in you. My form, though, seems to be my mother's, even as my mind often resembles your own. I see your peace on the water, and peeping out, I too float amongst the lulling waves.



I can just barely recall this day in Washington, at the National Zoo, when I saw a monkey for the first time. You must have been just a year or two older than I am today, with three kids already and a whole lot of life in front of you.



[I also realized that I've married a man who now strives to capture the very style you seem to have perfected in 1982. But that's another story altogether.]

For now it's celebration and good cheer.