Full Hearts & Calendars

On our family calendar during any given year, June is typically the month with the most entries. It’s a month with once-blank squares for each day crammed full of important date reminders notated in various colors of markers, ball point pens, pencils and highlighters and featuring cartoon-like stars, hearts, underlines, arrows, exclamation points and big, chunky, 3D lettering to mark the importance of a looming milestone birthday, for example, like someone turning 50. Or 55. Or … never mind. Let’s just say that the local Hallmark shop rolls out the red carpet for us in June.

One recent week in particular this month was crammed full with more milestone birthdays, anniversaries, weddings and miscellaneous events and celebrations than you can shake a Sharpie at. This one stretch alone, from June 10 through the 17, marked my father-in-law’s birthday, a niece’s birthday, our youngest son’s birthday and even my own birthday. If you’re playing along at home, Father’s Day also squeezed its celebratory little self into the end of this party-palooza of a week.

Following close by on the heels of this multi-celebration week was the milestone tenth anniversary of our oldest son and his beautiful bride. It’s humbling how the years seem to speed up the longer one has been married (my wife and I celebrated our own 27 year anniversary a mere two months ago), but in “only” ten years, these two exemplary young people have worked hard to build a healthy, happy and loving family and in the process, have given my wife and me our first three grandchildren; quite the accomplishment in a culture increasingly accepting of non-committed couples and babies raised without fathers in their lives.

Speaking of fathers, as this edition of the paper hits the street, yet another anniversary of sorts will have passed; although this one is not so worthy of celebration. You see, this week marks ten years since my own Dad passed away after a long, all-too-private battle with cancer.

That he lost his hard-fought fight only days after our oldest son was married has traditionally made this week a bittersweet one filled with mixed emotions for the past ten years.

I’ll always remember walking into the family room of my childhood home where Dad lay in a rented hospital bed, positioned in front of his beloved TV. Either his pain was too great or the morphine dose too heavy – or maybe a combination of both – but Dad didn’t respond in any way as I described our son’s wedding to him. Truth be told (and knowing him as well as I did), Dad most likely considered not having to attend a family wedding to be a welcome side effect of his condition.

To say that this tough, taciturn man was not one for sentimentality or emotional vulnerability would be a grand understatement. (It’s no wonder he never could understand me.) A few months before he died, in fact, I drove with him on a marathon, non-stop trip from La Crescenta up to my brother’s house in northern Oregon to help deliver a truck and trailer crammed full of tools and machinery Dad wanted my brother to inherit. On the mind-numbing drive up the coast and back, I tried several times to ask Dad about his childhood, early career, any particular cherished memories he might have at this stage of life – you know, the kind of thing you might expect a parent would want to pass along. No such luck. After my third or fourth attempt at such conversation he barked, “Why would I want to talk about such things? You’ve been watching too much Oprah.” And that was that. Man, it was a long, long drive home.

On a happier note, however, our family calendar pages next year will be even more jam-packed as we add not one, but two college graduations to our early summer celebrations. Yep, we’re definitely gonna need a bigger calendar. I’ll see you ‘round town.

Always Something to Celebrate

Just ask any of my close friends or immediate family members; I am one painfully, obsessively, ridiculously fanatical guy when it comes to celebrating (or at least recognizing with great fanfare and proclamation) any and all milestones. Be it birthdays (yes, even our dogs’), anniversaries of any kind, new jobs begun, old goals reached, pounds lost, memorabilia found, first steps or last graduations. My poor unfortunate family members will often pretend to be as excited as I am about any given commemorative occasion. More often than not, however, I’m met with exasperated sighs and rolled eyes whenever I ask, “Do you know what today is?!?”

For example, each October 24^th for the past 15 years, I’ve made it a point to take my dear wife out to dinner in recognition of another year of my self-employment. Granted, some years we’ve had a whole lot more to celebrate than recently. But nevertheless – not having to deal with combat driving to and from an office in the mid-Wilshire district and waste hours of every day in meetings listening to some self-impressed marketing monkey with an MBA and a penchant PowerPoint decks – is reason enough, I think, for an annual dinner out to mark the occasion.

One of my favorite annual rituals is to sit at a table on New Year’s day with a drawer-full of various colored Sharpie and highlighter pens, last year’s calendar, and three new, unwritten-upon calendars in front of me – one to hang in our kitchen for our primary family use, one that will live all year under the wireless keyboard on my office desk and one small, day-planner type that I carry with me to client meetings. I spend hours the first day of every January transferring each of the birthdays, anniversaries, school dates, work dates, planned trips and outings, and anything else that I feel deserves recognition during the upcoming year.

Depending on its perceived significance (in my mind, at least) each event listed will either get a simple underline, a colored underline, “stars” drawn next to it, a colored highlighter frame, multiple colored, concentric highlighter frames, lovingly drawn red hearts of various sizes (for wedding anniversaries and Valentine’s day, of course), cartoon fireworks, streamers, balloons, confetti and well, as I said – I’m a tad bit obsessive about this stuff.

Over the years, it’s always been fun to surprise a good friend or business associate by remembering their birthday or anniversary. I’ve lost track of how many people have – upon receiving a card or email from me on their special date – said something like, “How in the world did you remember that? My own husband/wife/kids/parents didn’t even remember!” Of course, with all the calendar/reminder apps now in use on everyone’s smart phones and lap tops, and with Facebook automatically sending daily reminders of friends’ birthdays, it’s taken a lot of the fun and uniqueness out of my habit. To surprise anyone today takes the mailing of an actual greeting card to their residence. Talk about your old school tactics.   

Okay, so having explained my passion for celebrating milestones of almost every and any kind, you’ll understand why I can’t let this, my 200^th official “My Thoughts, Exactly” column, pass without at least a mention. So, ta-da! Consider it mentioned and duly celebrated. I have now had the joy and privilege of writing two hundred weekly columns for editor, Robin Goldsworthy.

Some readers may remember that my first seventy-some-odd columns were published when Robin was editor of the now-defunct Crescenta Valley Sun, whose parent company was the Los Angeles Times. When the above-mentioned dysfunctional parent unceremoniously killed its offspring in 2009, Robin recognized the resulting void in community coverage, held her breath, said a whole bunch of fervent prayers and boldly launched the Crescenta Valley Weekly on her own dime. (Many locals have celebrated her efforts ever since, I might add.)

So what’s next on my calendar of celebrations? Since you asked, tomorrow just happens to be “Near Miss Day” to commemorate that fateful event in 1989 when a mountain-sized asteroid passed within 500,000 miles of earth. Whew, that was close. Then, Saturday marks the birthday of legendary magician and escape-artist Harry Houdini, although it’s probably too late to make reservations at the Magic Castle. Next, break out the ouzo because Sunday is Greece Independence Day. (Already? Wow, time flies.) Monday is actor Leonard Nimoy’s birthday, may he live long and prosper. And next Tuesday marks the annual Blessing of the Horses, Tractors and Cars in Osweiler, Luxembourg. Just because I won’t be attending in person, doesn’t mean I can’t raise a glass to the occasion.

I’ll see you ‘round town.

Note: This post is a longer version of my column first published yesterday, 3.22.12, in the Crescenta Valley Weekly newspaper.

© 2012 WordChaser, Inc.

Feelin’ the Facebook Love

So, today is my birthday. Seems to happen every year right about now. Even if I wanted to avoid it – or ignore it (which seems to be more the case with every added year) – Facebook makes it impossible.

For the five of you out there without a Facebook presence, the social networking juggernaut automatically notifies you when each and every “friend” of yours has a birthday. Not only on the day itself, but on the Sunday before you get a notice of all your friends who will celebrate a birthday in the coming weeks.

This is frustrating, because I’ve always taken some bit of pride in writing down my family and friends’ birthdays on a big paper calendar (talk about ‘old school’) that I have under the keyboard on my desk. Then (depending on the importance or significance of said friend or family member, to be brutally honest) I either send a quick email, make a phone call or – hopefully – have looked ahead early enough to have the time to go buy a card and drop it in the mail.

I can’t tell you how many people have been pleasantly surprised over the years that I bothered to remember their birthdays -- with even a quick email. It seems like such a simple thing to do, yet so many people just don’t seem to take the time to do it. Honestly, it’s been kinda fun to do something nice like that all these years.

Then came Facebook. Now remembering someone’s birthday is almost entirely done for you. All you have to do is click on a person’s name, type in your greeting and post it. Woo hoo. But I wouldn’t be surprised if there will soon be an ‘app for that’, too. It sure has taken the fun and “specialness” out of my efforts to brighten someone’s day, though. Dang.

Now all I have to worry about is how many messages I’ll get on my Facebook wall today. 25? 50? Do I dare hope for 100? Nah … because, I know no matter how many I get, it won’t be long until the insecure side of me starts asking why I didn’t get more. I mean, who doesn’t like me or want me to have a happy birthday? What did I do to them? Did I somehow miss their birthday?

Crud. Life used to be so much simpler. I must be getting older.  

Happy birthday to me.