“There’s milestones on the Dover Road.”
Sun, we have sun. Fern is even lying by the front door where the sun is streaming through the glass onto the floor. It is chilly still, but spring chilly, not winter cold. Today is the home opener for the Red Sox. The pre-game will have much hoopla as they will be receiving their World Series rings and the championship flag will be raised. My friends and I are watching together and will be eating baseball food as if we were at the park only we’ll be warmer and closer to the bathroom. I’ll be wearing my new Red Sox sweatshirt, a gift from my sister at Christmas. It’s red as befitting the team and the holiday.
When I was young, I didn’t give a whole lot of thought to the future. It always amazed me when people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I didn’t know what I was going to do on Saturday let alone in ten or fifteen years. When I was twelve, I couldn’t wait to be thirteen, a teenager with all the rights and privileges which came with that magic number. When I turned thirteen, there wasn’t any magic. I was shocked. My sixteenth birthday, my sweet sixteenth birthday, was a total disappointment. We were on vacation with my aunt and uncle and my birthday was their anniversary so the cake had Happy Birthday and Happy Anniversary written across it. I hated it. I wanted fireworks and balloons as this was a significant birthday, a milestone, but, instead, it was a total bust. Eighteen didn’t mean much in those days. We were all waiting to be twenty-one, the big birthday with so much attached. My twenty-first birthday lived up to its hype. My boyfriend at the time gave me a magnum of champagne, and my friends took me out to dinner. They got drunk and forgot to pay the bill so I did. I registered to vote. According to the law, I was now an adult. I took that with mixed emotions.
The last big celebration was when I turned sixty. My sister flew out from Colorado, and the three of us, my two sisters and I, spent the day in Boston, took a tour of Fenway and went to the ballgame. That was my gift from them, and it was great one.
Birthdays are special to me, each one a milestone, another year of life well-lived. It’s not my birthday. I just got to thinking.
Explore posts in the same categories: MusingsTags: growing up, sunny day, sweet sixteen, teenager, thirteen, time, twenty-one
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keepthecoffeecoming.blog 
April 4, 2014 at 12:25 pm
Hi Kat,
I don’t remember my 13th birthday or my 16th birthday or my 21st birthday for that matter. Birthdays weren’t a big deal.
I do remember a birthday somewhere in my 40’s where my mother organized a birthday dinner for me, invited my brothers and their families and made sure to have all my favorite foods. I came in from a horseback riding morning just in time to see them cutting into my birthday cake. My mother had forgotten to invite me.
The friend I had gone riding with phoned me right at that moment to tell me something she had forgotten. When I told her what was happening she laughed so loudly I had to pull the phone off my ear. 😀
My work unit did a 50th birthday for me. Black balloons taped all over my cube and mylar teddy bear confetti scattered all over my desk. My friend Jim tried to tell me that the black balloons really symbolized black pearls which everyone knew were very, very precious and rare. Yes, of course, they did. 🙂
The sun was here but now it is gone. It is opening day for my favorite ice cream place and that is where I’m going.
Happy Opening Day to you as well. Enjoy the game.
April 4, 2014 at 12:38 pm
🙂 🙂 🙂 I’m pretty sure that would happen to me as well if my mother did something like that. I started laughing so loud when I read that that my dopgs just stared at me 🙂
April 4, 2014 at 3:56 pm
It was funny. My sister-in-law was happy because they held off eating as long as possible so the roast beef was very well done, just the way she liked it. 🙂
April 4, 2014 at 4:05 pm
🙂
April 4, 2014 at 2:31 pm
That party story, Caryn, is one of the funniest things I’ve read in a long, long time. It sounds like a sitcom episode I’d never believe in a million years. Yet apparently those sorts of things actually do happen. The best part is that by not inviting you, it turned the day into one you’ll never forget and will (probably) always cherish because of the memories it surely evokes. Classic.
April 4, 2014 at 3:57 pm
I can still picture it. When I asked my mother why she didn’t tell me she was having a birthday dinner for me on a day that wasn’t my birthday she said, “I assumed you’d know”. Okay, Mom. 🙂
April 4, 2014 at 5:38 pm
im6,
I totally agree. A forgotten birthday party is one never to forget!
April 4, 2014 at 5:17 pm
Hi Caryn,
I laughed right out loud when I read this. I’d have wondered where you were and gone looking. At least they seemed to have had some fun
50th parties do seem to lean toward the black.
I figure after 40 they are all alike. I did have a party at 40 given by a friend and we had the party of the decades when I was 50. My uncle turned 60 and my mother 70 all of us within a week of each other in August. It was a great party.
No sun today, and it is cold. The Sox are losing!
April 4, 2014 at 12:36 pm
We don’t have anything like sweet sixteen here, fifteen is the year one longs for because that’s when we are allowed to drive a moped. We’ve never been allowed to take our driving license until we become eighteen. We are allowed to drink alchohol when we’re eighteen in bars, restaurants and pubs but not allowed to buy it in the liquor store 🙂 (that we are when we’re 20). I’ve never seen the logic in that 🙂
Birthdays have never been a big thing in my family, yes there are some presents and cake of course but no big parties, so I rarely remember it is my birthday when it arrives 🙂 This year however, I’ll become 50, I will remember it because we get a day free from work with pay as a gift from the fabric owners and a gift certifficate too 🙂
I did laugh when I read that You had to pay for the dinner 🙂
Still sunny and warm during the day and nasty cold during the night, so I have a fire in the stove right now to keep us warm during the night. Soon it’ll be time to turn of the radiators 🙂
Have a great day!
Christer.
April 4, 2014 at 5:21 pm
Christer,
We can’t drive until 16 and 3/4. You can get a learner’s permit before that but not an actual license. The drinking age here is 21 for everything. For a while it was 18, but that turned out to be a disaster so they went back to 21.
When we were kids, birthdays were big but not when we became adults unless it was a milestone birthday. I always sent my mother flowers for her birthday but that was special.
My friends asked each other how much they owed for the dinner which is how they found out no oe paid.
Cold and nasty here.
Have a great evening!
April 4, 2014 at 1:29 pm
GW is painting (subject to interpretation) Big Puffy has upset the President of the United States of America and violated image copright, the Bengals have another day of rain, and I am trying to find a review of Emmylou’s opening night of the Wrecking Ball tour at the Wiltern.
I like Birthdays a lot, I fuss and worry about getting them right. 18 meant a drivers license, 21 meant all grown up and the forthcoming 60 means really really old.
April 4, 2014 at 5:23 pm
My Dear Hedley,
I always like to make a big thing of birthdays. We all celebrate the big holidays but birthdays are special. I make my friend’s favorite dinners and desserts for their birthdays.
I thought 60 was really old as well until I became 60. Now I’m leaning toward 80 as really, really old.
April 4, 2014 at 1:50 pm
Just curious, what kind of food is baseball food?
Have fun watching the game!
Same age as Christer I should do something special on my birthday this year, but it certainly won’t be a party.
April 4, 2014 at 5:25 pm
Birgit,
Before the game we had popcorn and chips though chips aren’t really game food, but popcorn definitely is. For dinner we had hot dogs, the iconic baseball food.
You definitely need to do something special for yourself. Milestone birthdays need to be commemorated in some way.
April 4, 2014 at 4:28 pm
Caryn wins for the best laugh of the day… :0
It is VERY hard to actually celebrate my birthday as it falls on Dec. 26th. No one feels like partying…they are all broke and tired and put off doing anything special til after the New Year.
When I was a kid my parents tried to make it a special day, but even that was sometimes hard because it was slammed so close to St. Nick. Things were done slightly before or in rare cases, right after. I think that is why I fondly remember stuff done the day of…once some friends treated me to a hockey game. We went all the way to Long Island to the Nassau Coliseum to see the Islanders. A couple years ago I was promised dinner the day of but then a 14 inch snowfall put the kibosh on that…
To compensate I now do something nice on my birthday FOR ME…last year i bought a new Mets cap and sneakers for myself, bought my favorite chinese for dinner, bought a slice of cake, ate everything and then went to see two late movies. Of course my friends did stuff with me AROUND the date, but I did something ON the date. Because sometimes ya gotta make your own fun! 🙂
Birgit – – I have a friend who has that name, believe it or not – – baseball food is any food they serve at the baseball park…hotdogs, roasted peanuts in the shell, soda, beer, popcorn – – stuff like that.
Waving from Jersey…
Coleen
April 4, 2014 at 4:49 pm
Thanks, Coleen, I’ve never visited a baseball park so I was curious. It’s more diverse than our soccer food: beer, beer, (curry) sausage and still more beer.
April 4, 2014 at 4:56 pm
Oh, I forgot,… Waving from Europe, where baseball is an exotic sport and way too many women are called Birgit…
April 5, 2014 at 5:57 pm
Birgit, you are too funny…ya made me giggle! 🙂
I would love to take a tour of Europe someday…
Coleen
April 4, 2014 at 5:30 pm
Coleen,
I agree with you. I got a chuckle out of her not being invited.
One of my friends has the same birthday. We used to throw him a half-birthday party in July every year. It was fun for us to get together, and we barbecued and drank a bit.
It is so unfair to lump your birthday and Christmas, but I really like your celebrating on your own. You did it up really well. Kudos for a great birthday!
Waving from cold Cape Cod!!!
April 4, 2014 at 5:12 pm
I always knew what I wanted to do when I grew up and I did it. It took awhile but I learned a lot working at meaningless jobs to earn the money to get training I needed. In April of 1965 I turned 18 and registered for both the draft and to vote. Luckily, I have voted in every major election since then and I avoided the draft by drawing a great number in the first draft lottery. During college I majored in draft avoidance and chasing woman. I was more successful with the former than the later 🙂
When will we ever learn that we can’t be the world’s policeman? When President Eisenhower left office in 1960 he warned that we should be wary of the military industrial complex. That was coming from a former five star general.
Today was cooler but clear and breezy after that cold front spawned hail and possibly tornados last night. Living in ‘tornado alley’ has it’s advantages and disadvantages. We don’t get much snow but we get our share of the namesake.
April 4, 2014 at 5:37 pm
Bob,
I don’t know if we will ever learn. Eisenhower sent the first Americans into Vietnam as trainers for their army so he had a hand in it. I won’t forgive Bush for the mess he got us into including the economy. Who are we to dictate how other countries should be governed.
I couldn’t register to vote until I was 21, but I have voted in every election since then. It wasn’t until 1971 that 18 year olds were given the right to vote. You sneaked in early.
Cold and raw day today with no sun, no warmth-I’m tired of this!
April 4, 2014 at 6:48 pm
Oops, my mistake. You are right I had to wait until the 1968 election. However, my error made my sentence more fun. 🙂
The attacks of 9/11 were horrific and we should have put our military efforts to bring those who perpetrated it to justice. Saddam Hussein was not one of them. The war in Iraqi took our eye off the real terrorists in Afghanistan and took the lives of too many brave Allied troops for some still unknown purpose. My speculation is that Vice President Chaney and the big oil companies used the 9/11 attack to get control of the Iraqi oil fields. Bush’s father was smart enough to know the real consequences of invading Iraqi. Saddam was a bad guy, but there are lots of other bad guys in the world. Of course those bad guys weren’t sitting on top of major oil reserves.
April 4, 2014 at 7:48 pm
Bob,
Yup, I remember voting for Humphrey.
I agree that there was no America is at risk reason for that invasion. It had already been proved that there were no WMD’s there and the terrorists were elsewhere. Cheney was the wizard behind the curtain for the whole of Bush’s presidency.
April 4, 2014 at 8:08 pm
Not to get all political, but Bush II was a puppet plain and simple. And Cheney and his minions were pulling the strings. Which reminds me of a great quote today from the always funny, always accurate Andy Borowitz: “What a wonderful world this would be if George W. Bush had discovered he was meant to be a painter twenty years ago.”
April 4, 2014 at 8:13 pm
im6,
I agree with you only I called Cheney the wizard behind the curtain but I meant exactly what you said. Bush wasn’t smart enough!
April 4, 2014 at 8:19 pm
Wizard connotes some sort of intelligence, but I get your drift. Here’s a song for you (featuring the great Adrian Belew): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9Tf-jO2L80
April 4, 2014 at 8:26 pm
im6,
I meant pushing the buttons and pulling the levers!
April 4, 2014 at 11:43 pm
I find it interesting that the former Vice Pres was able to get a heart transplant so quickly. I recommend Molly Ivin’s George W biography, “Shurb”.
April 5, 2014 at 12:53 am
Bob,
I know your comment was tongue in cheek about the heart. Influence has its sWAY.
April 4, 2014 at 8:40 pm
Re: Cheney. I think they only told him they performed a heart transplant. I suspect they substituted some other organ/tissue that just happens to keep his blood pumping. He has no heart. I’d say his string-pulling fingers work fine, but his shooting a friend in the face would suggest otherwise. In case I’m being a bit vague: I’m not a fan 😉
April 4, 2014 at 8:43 pm
im6,
Wow, thanks for explaining to me your feelings toward Mr. Chaney. I was totally confused!
I wasn’t a fan of his or Mr. Bush, the dummy on the knee.