First Posted: 10/30/2014
They say it’s your birthday,
Well, it’s my birthday too, yeah
The Beatles
The average lifespan of an American in 1986 was 74 years. My birthday, Nov. 2, fell on Sunday that year too, and, since I turned 37, I wrote a column under the headline “Reflections at halftime.”
I don’t remember what I wrote but I imagine it included some reference to my daughter who was 3 at the time and my son who had been born about five weeks earlier.
I do, however, remember a comment I received a couple of days later. The letter writer, who chose to remain anonymous, took me to task for assuming I was going to live a full 74 years when I “could die tomorrow.” He was right, of course, but I already knew that. I wish he had told me something more enlightening, like how fast the rest of my life was going to to fly by. Today I become 65.
That 3-year-old little tyke Greta got married last Saturday in San Antonio, Texas. The six-pound infant who was her brand new brother then was in the wedding party. He’s 28 now and lives in Chicago. She still calls him Mikey, though he is Mike to just about everyone else and Michael to me.
If I were to go with the theme of that 1986 column, I’d be writing “Reflections well into the fourth quarter,” but that’s not where my thoughts are today. My thoughts, as usual on my birthday, are of others, three others actually, and of late, a fourth. See, in my family, my sister Barbara was born on Nov. 1, I on Nov. 2 a year later and my brother Bill on Nov. 4 two years after that. I always joked that I was married before I saw a birthday cake with only my name on it. Except it wasn’t a joke. Up until then the only cakes I saw always said, “Happy birthday, Barbie, Eddie, Billy.”
That, I believe, helped make me humble, which is something I’m proud of, except saying it seems to lack humility.
I think about Barbie every day and ask her to keep an eye on me from heaven. I know she will because Barbie loved me. She loved easily. And well.
My mom often told the story of hearing me crying when I was an infant and rushing to my crib only to find my bottle missing. Barbie had swiped it and was slugging away under the dining room table, hidden by the floor-length table cloth. I never held that against her.
The morning after Barbie was told she had only six months to live, I stood in her room at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital and looked out at the sun coming up over the Philadelphia skyline and said, “Barb, when you know you’re going to die, you have to savor every sunrise.” A moment later, I added, “And when you think about it, we all know we are going to die. So let’s savor this one together.”
So, no, that letter writer in ‘86 did not tell me anything new.
My birthday also causes me to think of my friend Anne Carmody, who, like Barbie, was born on Nov. 1.
Anne worked with me at the Sunday Dispatch for a good 20 years. She was, hands down, the fastest typist you could imagine. You needed to see her to fully appreciate it. Those were the days when the articles, written on typewriters by reporters, had to be re-typed into the “system” and that was Anne’s job. We had a laid-back atmosphere and Anne would watch soap operas on a little portable television while she typed. I’m not kidding. And this was before the term multi-tasking had been invented.
Anne rarely made a typing error, by the way. Unless the particular soap got really exciting.
I went from part-time sports editor to managing editor pretty quickly, but one chore I was never able to shake was taking the lunch order.
A running gag with Anne was she would have a cup of soup, “But no pea.”
Anne was known to enjoy an adult beverage — a Southern Comfort Manhattan her cocktail of choice — and I’ll never forget how distraught she was the time I told her I was abstaining from alcohol for Lent. I might as well have said I was renouncing my Irish heritage, or becoming a Republican.
I enjoyed many a party at the home of “Annie Babes,” as she is known by her family and close friends, and her mom Jule, who had actually taught my mother in high school.
I honestly do not remember the last time I saw Anne, which is insane because she lives only two miles away. (We have to do something about that.) But we never forget to send each other a birthday card. We’ve been doing that for more than 30 years.
I mentioned earlier there is a new addition to my birthday thoughts and that is a person I met only once face to face but managed to develop a rich friendship with. Jayla Wallingford works as a graphic designer and editor at the “design hub” in Ohio where the Sunday Dispatch is produced. I call her a cyber friend.
My birthday fell on a Saturday last year and, while working on the Dispatch, I learned it was Jayla’s birthday, too. She told me she kept singing the Beatles’ lyrics printed above all that day. So had I.
