I am pulling a modified Dear Abby.
Now and then the current-holder of the Abigail Van Buren nom de plume ("Dear Abby") flits off somewhere and leaves a note that announces: "Abby is away doing something far more important than playing misery aunt to your Enquirer-inspired letters designed to challenge her sagacity" or something like that. Readers are then treated to re-runs that are no more interesting on second reading than when they were first published.
I am in a similar situation. Even though I am still in Barra de Navidad, I have been in bed since I returned to Zamora fighting a head cold I contracted while confined in our tour bus. (And, yes, Jennifer, you are correct; that is one good reason to avoid group tours.)
But I am not going to inflict old essays on you. I have been looking through photographs and checking my long list of essays-I-should-write. Just like the case of the unrequited pince-nez, time has conspired to resuscitate a passé topic -- my last birthday.
For some reason, I never managed to get around to mentioning how pleasant my Big Birthday was -- and all thanks to people I know.
My biggest surprise came from Omar, my Mexican son. And because our dad-son relationship is new, we have no memories bittersweet with time, as the Alan and Marilyn Bergman would have it. So, I really do not expect my milestones to be acknowledged with much more than a nod and a grunt.
Teenagers do not tend to be sentimental. To me, that is a virtue.
Well, I was wrong. He bought me a birthday cake (not one of those soggy Mexican cakes I find treacly inedible; he does know me that much) complete with a candle. I almost expected the candle to be one of those trick wicks that causes the person blowing it out to smile indulgently while seething brighter than the eternal flame in front of him. Remember. I said he knows me. He played it straight.
Along with the cake came a blue shirt that I could have chosen for myself. And that is a true skill.
That night I went to dinner at my favorite seafood restaurant to celebrate with my Barra friends, Lou and Wynn Moody for a practically perfect dinner. Wynn and I like to pretend we are brother and sister, though she finds my humor an acquired taste that she has not.
The party was just the right size. I find dinner with more than four people to be a waste of time. At least more tedious than any fun generated.
So, why am I writing about a birthday that slipped away two months ago? Well, two events have made it timely once again.
The first is that Lou and Wynn, following the advice of James: "Show me this faith of yours without the actions, and I will show you my faith by my actions!", spontaneously volunteered to take me to the Manzanillo airport next week for the first leg of my flight to Australia. That would have been good enough to revive my birthday joy.
But there was a second. My old friend Leo Bauman (you met him in leo ascendant) sent me one of those guy to guy birthday cards that are witty enough to share with one another, but would be highly inappropriate to post on the Mexpatriate Family Network. It arrived on 4 March while I was wending my way through the Mexican highlands. I picked it up on Wednesday when I momentarily got out of bed to take my soiled clothes to the laundress.
Cards will remain one of those forms of communication that can never be replaced with digitized greetings. When I am moldering in the rest home with The Final Head Cold, these cards will be a reminder of a life well led with friends.
And that is why this coot with the death rattle of a cough is telling you a tale of a birthday that happened months ago as if it had happened yesterday. We old people do that.
So, I will get back under the covers, drink another pot of ginger-lemon tea, and try to recall what else I have neglected to tell you over the past two months. There were eighteen tales on my list. We have only covered two.
The only thing that will save you now is if I really do take a Dear Abby sabbatical. Don't count on it.
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