and thanks for being in a the shape of a mitten
so i can always show where i’m from
or where i’m going
or where i got lost
and thanks for both peninsulas
i love both of you
and thanks for being surrounded by the 5 great lakes so i never go thirsty
and for being so close to canada so i can travel internationally
i know you’ve had some rough years
but you look pretty good for your age
at least to me.
“all the world is birthday cake,
so take a piece, but not too much.”
– george harrison
===
today
i celebrate
as
each of those numerals
represent something
important to me
my number of years on earth
my number of daughters
my number of grand babies
my number of posts
my number of dog years on earth
ah, but
which is which?
===
“with mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.”
― william shakespeare
imagine
our surprise
when
little t
a kinder
in my class
and i
his teacher
found out
that
we
shared
a birthday
a last name
a mother’s first and last name
and
we
decided
that
we
must
be
twins
born
decades
apart
—
“a person’s a person, no matter how small.” – dr. seuss
—
image credit: rcinet.com
happy birthday sweet baby girl
you are the last
of the grandbabies
six under six
to turn two
little r.
and your beloved dog, baron
and the rest of our family
will always watch over you
and look up to you
even if you are the youngest.
One of the virtues of being very young
is that you don’t let the facts get in the way of your imagination.
~Sam Levenson
today is my father’s birthday and he’s gone now, but never forgotten.and whenever i see the show, ‘mad men’, i think of him. the look, the feel, the era – that was our life growing up. we lived in the twirly, swirling world of advertising.
my dad, in the left forefront, in a very important lunch meeting
we had cocktail parties at our suburban detroit house, hosting automotive clients and friends and all sorts of interesting characters. there were martinis and dresses and canapés and jazz and laughs long into the night. i once saw him put on a horrible wig and wear it like nothing was unusual, just to get a reaction. we would sneak down in our pajamas and sit on the stairs, just to be a part of all the hullabaloo.
on regular nights, we were always pitching ideas to him around the dinner table and suggesting musical lyrics, tag lines, and concepts for commercials. we never realized he was a media guy in the business, and that all of our creative gestures did not have any impact, other than making him laugh.
he was a tall, blonde, happy guy, who married my mother, a tiny, dark strong italian, and he was no match for her really. i remember him working a lot, traveling, and he could not fix a thing around the house or cook an egg or plant a tree, but he could tell a story, and he could talk anyone into buying anything, and he was very good at what he did everyday in the office – a man absolutely born to the job.
my parents
on saturdays, i watched every western and wwll movie with him, just so we could hang out together on the couch. and he would tell me made-up stories about the old stars. to this day, i remember the music from ‘the dirty dozen,’ and i can name every cowboy ever on television. he took my sisters and i on ‘one-on-one daddy/daughter dates’, where we got to choose what we did, and i frequently picked sharing a milkshake, his favorite, and going to a funny movie with him, just to hear him laugh.
he had the same name as a local television host, a former hollywood bit-player, who hosted a popular movie show. and even though they looked nothing like each other, we always had good tables when going out to dinner, for when he made reservations, restaurants frequently thought he was the same guy, and he never told them any different. he cheerfully signed autographs all the time for people when they discovered his name, and they somehow imagined him to be the same person.
when i was little, he showed me his ‘official man from u.n.c.l.e. identification card,’ and told me it was top secret, that he was really a spy, and not to tell anyone. it made sense to me as he had to travel a lot, and i figured advertising was the perfect cover. i always loved, spies, and mysteries and crime stories, and i was so excited that i immediately told everyone i came in contact with, and swore them to secrecy too. when i was much older, and i brought it up, he said that one of his clients, chevrolet, had sponsored the show, and they had given him the i.d. card as a fun promotional gift. and i loved him for letting me imagine.
dad on the right involved in some schmoozing and story-telling
interesting that i ended up in the same business, through a very circuitous route, many years later. guess it was in my blood, though i was on the creative and promotions side of the ad world, where i had to tell stories and get people to buy my product – not cars, but instead, movies and plays and parades and circuses – pure entertainment. experiences where they could suspend reality for a bit and just let their imaginations roam free.
and when he offered me media suggestions, they did not have any impact, other than making me laugh. happy birthday dad, and thanks for all of the memories, both the ones that were real and the ones you created for me.
—
Don Draper: Advertising is based on one thing: happiness. And do you know what happiness is? Happiness is the smell of a new car. It’s freedom from fear. It’s a billboard on the side of a road that screams with reassurance that whatever you’re doing is OK. You are OK. – (Season 1, Episode 1 – Mad Men)
found this old book of love that my daughters had given me for my birthday more than a decade ago. i laughed out loud all over again, at their kind and loving and humorous approach to life. no one had much money, but this book was worth everything. they spoiled me with offers of flowers and treats and reluctant shared experiences and pampering (even though they signed up their third sister who was out of the country for this task). here are some of the coupons found within:
Children make your life important. –Erma Bombeck
happy birthday to my eldest daughter who lives in a very different time zone and place and across the seas and over the lands and on the other side of the international date line and below the equator and in another hemisphere. as far away as we physically are from each other, our letters – long and flowery, on beautiful papers, or short and scribbled on scraps, or captions made on things to note, using pens and pencils and markers and paint and crayons and cut-outs and news, are one of the things that keep us so close.
today, i think of you and picture you opening the letter that i have written for you to celebrate this very special day. and who knows? one day, you may even look into your rolling ocean and see a bottle bobbing there, or look to your blue sky and see a balloon tied to a note, or turn to a colorful bird, sitting atop a lovely flower in your front yard, holding an envelope in its bill, or watch a kangaroo jump towards you with a packet emerging from its pouch, and know there is a message in there, from me to you, just waiting for you to open –
More than kisses, letters mingle souls. – John Donne
—
missing her today
my sis my friend and she was
gone way too early
I didn't have my glasses on.... 