Sunday 

5 February 2017

— And—don’t you know--when I looked out my window this morning, there—big as life—was my first pheasant pecking away under the California feeder my brother David sent years and years ago.

Good Morning All,

Last year, Johs sent me a plane ticket to Washington D.C., and Holly flew down from New Hampshire, so we could celebrate my three-score-and-ten in style. I had a flat-out wonderful time, although no one was more surprised than me to still be on this mortal coil, especially after a doctor in West Virginia in 1968 examined me for my Peace Corps physical  and inquired why my heart murmur had not killed me by age three.

Johs’s partner Helen brought us tickets to see one of my half dozen favorite plays The Glass Menagerie at Ford’s Theater where the balcony to the right of the stage is still decked out in American flags and black crepe. As I’ve probably mentioned, the play started badly because some old English teacher in the audience was muttering all Amanda’s and Tom’s and Laura’s lines, but then Holly socked me in the arm and brought me to my senses.

As I have also probably mentioned, we drove out to Bethesda to the hospital where I was born. I went to the information desk and asked the elderly woman there if she remembered me. She studied my face. I did my best to put on the same expression my former students put on when they come for a visit and ask the same question. It’s an expression that says: “Oh, please, please, don’t let me be someone of so little importance in your life that you can’t recollect my name, even though I sat in the third seat of the second row in your class for three years and won second prize in the short story contest.”

The elderly woman behind the information desk was doing her best, God love her, to recognize me, failing, and finally saying with lovely sympathy in her voice, “I’m very sorry, but … well, I’m afraid I don’t.”

 “Are you sure?” I asked, furling out my lower lip just a little.

Johs, Holly, and Helen had by now retreated to positions behind the large potted plants by the front door.

“Well,” the lady said, apologetically, "it’s just that I see so many people every day."

“But I was born in this very hospital,” I then revealed, “a mere seventy years ago on this very day.”

The elderly lady’s face showed a flash of surprise before it lit up and we both laughed. I cannot tell you if the kids laughed, but then I suspect you had to be seventy or close to it to get a joke like that.

Believe it or not, about ten years ago, I met a man born in that very hospital on the very day I was. Believe it or not, I missed a once-in-a-life time chance to say, “Gee, you look an awful lot like my dad."

We also went to Sleaford Place, the street where I spent my first seven years. Two doors up from my house a woman was sweeping her porch. I inquired if she might possibly be a Gundy. Yes, indeed she was. Turned out she was the daughter of Mark, one of my childhood friends, who was coming over that night for supper. I asked her to ask Mark if he recalled the fight we had over Eisenhower and Stevenson.  I was for Ike, probably because I did not know Adlai was born on my birthday a mere 46 years before me. 

My birthday dinner was superb, steak, smashed, and homemade hollandaise sauce, the first time I’d ever had hollandaise sauce. I gave everyone table presents of spectacles made out of plastic drinking straws, one end of which went into your mouth, the other into the glass, so we could all enjoy the wine passing around your eyeballs before you got to taste it. Those table gifts were, I felt, as good as the rubber dart guns I gave out at my eleventh birthday, the better for a ferocious gun battle down in the rec room.

I got lots of presents and Holly read a long and very funny poem she’d written for the occasion. I would now quote some of it to you, but it is yet hiding in one of the fifty or so un-emptied boxes in the house or out in the garage. 

Finally, today’s Day Book poem was the first I ever sold. The Christian Science Monitor paid me $25.00 dollars for it back in, I think, 1966. The cat with the bright idea is Cardigan. And did you hear about the wonderful cook who said about her son, “Oh, yes, every Christmas he comes home for the Hollandaise."

Go Well and Stay Well, 

Bhekaron

P.S. Here’s a shot of the old guy in his nearly completed birthday hat.