Thank you, everyone, for the birthday wishes -- hundreds of them! It feels good to be in a world that includes you, and I am grateful for your friendship. Turning 50 has in no way been traumatic, mostly because the last 24 hours offered so many reminders of good fortune. The strangely sentimental part of me prefers ordinary days to festivals and bacchanals, so all I had asked Wendy by way of birthday celebration was a family dinner at my favorite Indian restaurant followed by cake at home. For me it is enough to have Wendy as a partner and Alex and Katherine for children -- I mean, really, they are three of the most extraordinary humans to have lived, and I get to spend my time with them. What could be better than that? But when I walked into Cafe of India who should be sitting at the table already but my brother and best friend Mark, whod flown to DC just for the evening. We stayed up late drinking prosecco, and then this morning he took the Metro to the airport while I went to my office. I so enjoy my Chaucer class this semester, and we had an energetic conversation of the Shipmans Tale, the John/Eleanor Rykener case, and the first sections of Bruces A Burnable Book. Then my weekly lunch with Ayanna Thompson, and I was thinking how lucky I am to have colleagues who are also good friends. Email, reading, and chatting with people I like occupied the afternoon ... and now I am home, knowing that I have won some kind of cosmic lottery, to have had a day so ordinary and so vibrant at once. A sincere thank you to everyone who has read this mawkish post so far: you might not know it, because I am not very good at saying it, but you make my life much the better and I am happy for you being a part of it. Jeffrey
Posted on: Tue, 04 Nov 2014 22:49:53 +0000