Approximately a bazillion people have noted that this past week marks the two-year anniversary of when things in the US initially shut down because of Covid. Yesterday was the second anniversary of Union closing down just before the end of the term, and heading into the all-remote Spring 2020 term, and today is the second anniversary of the kids’ last day of in-person sixth and third grades.
A far more important but less remarked-upon chronological commemoration, though, is that today is my father’s 75th birthday. Admittedly, that’s mostly important to my immediate family and not, you know, random wannabe pundits on Twitter, but it’s hard to overstate the importance for us.
Accordingly, we spent the weekend down at my parents’, where the kids busted out their Flying Turtle scooters, we went out to dinner at the Italian place in my hometown (where I managed to slip a credit card to the waitress without my parents’ noticing in time to stop the transaction…), we went sledding in an epic snowstorm (probably not the greatest plan of the weekend…), and I split four games of foosball against The Pip. But mostly, we just hung around at Grandma and Grandpa’s.
It’s been kind of a shitty year for the older generations of our family— we lost my grandmother (her 96th birthday would’ve been last Thursday) and one of my uncles last year, and two of my father’s uncles have died in the last month. On the flip side, though, we’re extremely lucky to still have a lot of close family. Over the last month or so, we’ve been able to take the kids to visit both sets of grandparents, who are all active enough to do fun stuff with the kids. And in another month or so, we’ll be taking the kids to visit my sister in California, for more adventures.
But the specific point here is to celebrate my dad’s milestone birthday. He is unquestionably one of the two most influential people in terms of making me the man I am today (the other is my mom, and no, I’m not ranking them). And it’s been awesome these last thirteen-and-a-half years sharing him with SteelyKid and The Pip.
Happy 75th, Dad. thanks for everything. Here’s to many more to come.
This is uncharacteristically sincere for me, which is why you get this ironic-apologetic footer with some buttons:
I’ll also use this opportunity to note that on Saturday, I crossed the Brimley Line, and am now older than Wilford Brimley when Coccoon was released. If you want to say something regarding any of these notable dates, the comments will be open.