Nightglow Window

B-day

It's a quiet day, this first day of my 41st year, but that's okay. Bill A. called last night and it was a pleasure to talk to him. He is now the oldest friend that I am still in contact with. I met him November 1980 on the fields of Shorecliffs Middle School. He was a roommate in college, then he moved clear across the country, like friends often do. He's now a college history professor in Upstate New York.

I hadn't spoken to him in two years and a few months, but we picked up the conversation like there had never been a pause. We talked for more than two hours, until my eyelids went droopy. It was the slow, calm conversation of old friends.

The rain started in earnest after midnight, carried by a howling wind. In the next 24 hours, more than nine inches will fall up on Palomar Mountain, although the tally will be much less down here on the coast. The storm keeps me awake and it's still bucketing in the morning, preventing me from going for a surf, taking a bike ride, or doing much else I was hoping to. So I work instead.

After breakfast at Pannikin the girls clean their rooms and I work a bit more (my trade show starts in five days after all). Finally, I switch off the computer and check the mail, where there's a nice card from Brian H. -- just about the nicest thing I've received in a long time. It's just one of the wonderful fuzzies that brighten my day.

In the afternoon I go to the gym while the girls make lasagna and chocolate cake.

No, nothing too terribly exciting to report -- a quiet birthday punctuated with some nice surprises and reminders of relationships that will never fade. And that is, by far, the best gift anyone could hope for.