…with Gary Moss

Birthdays can be such wonderful celebrations. They are a time when we pause to look through the rear-view mirrors of our lives at all the places we’ve been and the things that we’ve done. Birthdays stir up memories of old and allow us to relive events otherwise set on the shelves of our past. Birthdays are benchmarks and milestones that notch achievement and fortitude. Birthdays are, for some, a time of rededication and planning for the future. (If one has made it this far, than it is more than likely there some more to go.)

Attending someone’s birthday party can be very joyful too. Just watching the celebrant glow in the warm aura of their friends is heart-warming too.

I attended two birthday parties yesterday. The day began with my mom’s 90th birthday party, a brunch, attended by a small number of her closest relatives. Grandson Alex Hale and great-grandson Wylie Sutton sang songs of tribute. Everyone enjoyed a traditional brunch of bagels and lox with all the trimmings, topped off with ‘hamentashin’ for Purim, and a traditional birthday cake.

Later that evening I attend a 65th ‘surprise’ birthday party for friend Donald Deitz. It too was a special happy ocassion.

An Aside:
There I was at the birthday party of a friend, not knowing many of his other friend, neighbor, or acquaintances. It was one of those cocktail style parties where people walk around nibbling on delicious food on servers and meeting and talking with other strangers, meeting at the party for the first time. So, I was standing there, eating a shrimp and an exotic type of cheese, when I overheard a stranger introducing himself to someone else in the room. When he said his name my ears perked up. I turned slowly. I stared at the (60ish) man. I stared hard. Behind his glasses and under his beard I imagined seeing the face of an 8 year old boy whom I had not seen in 50+ years. I turned to the stranger and said, “I know you;” “I knew you when were 8 years old.” And then I told him from where and when I knew him. His jaw dropped and his wife took four steps back. They were astounded. We stood together and talk for a good part of the evening and I felt like I reconnected with a long lost friend.

When I return home, to my scrabble club and friends on Wednesday, it will be like coming home to a birthday party. Come join us and party with us.