Birthdays

This is a season for birthday celebrations. Mine is today. It will be very quiet, rather like the mood set by my daughter's email this morning.

Hope that you don't have to do too much yardwork or drying of fruit and get to relax today, perhaps kicking back and listening to some music with Mimi resting on your lap and Mom making your favorite dinner (what would that be?).

I'll be celebrating your birthday at the barn.

I don't know if the reference to the barn was a comment on the nature of getting older or just recognition that she has the responsibility for two horses on Long Island.

Tomorrow is a much more important birthday celebration, one that has a centuries long history of celebration. I am always reminded of a particular celebration of Chistmas, that which I experienced in Salzburg in 1960 while there on one of the "semester abroad" programs with the University of Redlands.

The evening of my birthday was one of those nights when the temperature hovered just above freezing. The sky was overcast, it was foggy and the chill went through to your bones. Two of us went to the late Mass at the Salzburger Dom. I remember that the Mass performed was the music of Michael Hayden.

I remember more explicitly the transformation I felt on walking out of the Church. The ground was covered with an inch or two of new fallen snow, the sky was clear and the stars shown brightly. A few large flakes of snow still fell silently to the ground and little other than a few wishes for joy and health between friends broke the silence.

Such wishes I have for you.