57 Years

What did you do special for your birthday?

Why, I did something I've been wanting to do for years -- I took a masonry chisel and a hammer and took the first rows of tile off the island/sink in the kitchen. The activity was very satisfying, indeed.

The birthday was an incidental kind of experience; maybe I used the birthday idea to allow myself the gratification of taking more tiles off the kitchen countertops, though certainly I enjoyed the nice wishes so many people sent me.

June 8 fell in a hugely busy time in my mother's household back when I was a kid. Her greenhouse and nursery were burgeoning from mid-May until July with sales, and frankly, from mid-March with necessary duties, as she started a lot of her own plants from seed.

Dad's birthday was May 25, just two weeks before mine, so we tended to defer all birthdays until July, and just have a celebration day when we might have cake (banana cake, always the favorite) or a barbecue, or just a favorite meal. (Sauerkraut and dumplings, pot pie, a turkey with stuffing). So celebrating a birthday on a particular day still seems a bit odd to me.

When I woke up this morning, I was glad to see sun; I remembered that it was my birthday but had to pause to do the math to remember just how old I was. Do I feel 57?

How would I know, I've never been 57 before. Ask me in six months, then I might have some idea.