Older, etc. continued

Today, if you went to google.com, there was a tribute to Maurice Sendak in the form of an animated little film of some of Sendak's books, especially "Where the Wild Things Are."  I found it by accident but was so taken with it that I felt it was my own personal birthday present.  Turns out that Maurice and I shared the same birthday, albeit his was a few years before mine.  But just seeing that little film for the minute that it took to play brought me back to birthdays from a long time ago.

My kids and I and their Dad probably read "Where The Wild Things Are" more than 100 times.  We had our own copy, of course, after taking it out of the library over and over.  It never ceased to entertain us;  I think John and I liked it as much as the kids did, at least the first 50 times. But it was so brilliant that even if we tired of reading it, we couldn't be tired of reading it because it was original and smart. There wasn't the plethora of good kids books back then (and let's face it, it was more than 30 years ago) and WTWTA was one of the best.  Google did a good thing when they created that little tribute.

When it's your birthday and you are my age, you think about the things in your life that you have done and you think about the things you haven't done.  I have done a lot of things I wanted to do and I have had a lot of fun but there are still so many things I have not yet finished.  Or even started. Too many to mention.  Some will never happen, some might.  But the one, best thing I did was have our two kids.  Two amazing people.  If I add up all thing things I still want to do and add that total to all the cool, good things I have already done, that would still not measure up to the simple sum of my two kids.  They are the best thing anyone could have accomplished in any life.  No matter what.

Birthday cake, gifts, songs, phone calls, good wishes...... thank you to all of you who gave me those things today.  I had a good day, even if I am three times 21.  Heck, it's still younger than three times 22! 

Happy Birthday, Maurice.  Happy Birthday to me, too.