Birthday Week

Today my brother Mark turns 60 years old. Sixty! That's a mouthful, or post-ful. It is staggering to see how old we are now, particularly for the little old archivist that inhabits my body. In still quite a few ways, my life as a child in my principal family unit of Mom, Mark and me seems like only yesterday. I understand that as the baby of the group, my impressions are the most suspect of the three; they mostly center around the schools I went to, the dogs we had, the movies and TV shows we saw, plus Mom's occasional boyfriends like Albert and Cominos, and even Mark's brief heterosexual fling with a College of Marin classmate (cannot remember her name right now). I remember other things of course -- how could I omit our summer in Mexico when I was seven?

My own birthday passed by last Saturday. The climax of the day was a wonderful home-cooked meal by Karen of filet mignon, nuked potato and salad. Ian was at his mom's, so it was just the two of us. Other events of the day -- the karate studio had its black-belt testing scheduled, so I took mom over there so she wouldn't have to park; Edith brought Ian to join her shortly after. Neither my dad nor my son remembered to call me -- I was mostly surprised by my dad's forgetting it, especially since he called the day before about it -- so I had the privilege of laying some faux indignation on them both. I had 30-something birthday wishes on Facebook -- I expected somewhat more in light of the daily puns I've been donating to Zuckerberg's cyber-verse all year. I was most surprised to receive a greeting from Seth Barrish. I didn't think that would ever happen. Truth be told, he piggy-backed his greeting onto one from David Smith.

And of course, it is mom's birthday in two days. I have an idea that I will invite her and Ian to go see "Blue Jasmine" that evening. It's at the AMC Emeryville, and I do not want to deal with parking there, especially on a Friday night.  But I think I can handle it for one night. As noted in an earlier entry, Karen and I saw it at the Albany Twin a few weeks ago.

Ian is now all but officially enrolled in Westwind for his senior year. First payment has been made -- with nearly 2/3 of the amount already accounted for (carried over from the last month of his karate lesson payment from last spring). When he told Edith he wanted to go, she made it clear she wouldn't or couldn't stop him, but she did not and would not support his attendance there in any sense of the word. So it's up to me and mom. I've pledged $8,000 of the $12,000, and mom is forced to come up with the balance, but there are other avenues I can try.