Sunrise, Sunset. Swiftly Fly the Years

There were pictures and balls and treats and a puzzle; there was cake and ice cream and party favors and a birthday honoree, but at the center of it all was not your average birthday boy.

 Barrington, our Welsh Corgi "puppy" turns 10 this week, and we couldn't let the occasion pass unnoticed.

Barrington, after all, loves company – eagerly waits for it when we tell him that friends are on their way.

And if food is somehow involved...

all the better.

We sang to him, and he either loved it or hated it – it's not that easy to tell. But all in all, the party was a success.

As has his very life among us. Friends will remember that the early days and even weeks of our life together didn't hold out much promise. Having him at all was the interest of only half of our household. But the second half loved the first half and after a whirlwind courtship this tailless little hairball with one flopped over ear took up residence among us – first in the basement where we wouldn't hear him crying, and then in our hearts, and now virtually anywhere else he chooses. Except on the blue furniture. Except when we aren't watching.

Now ten years on, it's hard to imagine life without him – hard to remember life before him; hard to picture life, or even entertain the thought of life, after him. Adorable, brilliant, amusing and endearing, ingenious, winsome, playful and forgiving, he has cuddled and nuzzled and shed and herded his way into the very core of our lives. And we are grateful. Both of us, it turns out.

Happy birthday, Barrington. Thanks for being patient with us; for teaching us well; and for loving us into a whole new way of seeing life.

1956 Was, For Me, A Very Good Year

It's hard to imagine my mother being wheeled into the delivery room on a gurney. It's hard to imagine my Dad pacing the waiting room floor. But here I am: 51 years to the day after such requisite events most certainly occurred; happy, if not conspicuously wealthy and only occasionally wise.

Change that. I am fantastically wealthy. The currency just doesn't happen to be money -- although by world standards that wouldn't be quite true. I have everything I need and most of what I want, with fewer ripples in my pond than I deserve. I am surrounded by love and encouragement, forgiveness and grace, along with the creative vocational space in which to thrive. I have opportunity, adequate tools, fascinating toys, ample music, and bright colors. There are even surpluses -- like my waistline, though that is hardly a plus. And there are conspicuous deficits -- most significantly in the category of habits of exercise and health.

But hopefully we are changing all that, Lori and I. For as many birthday and anniversary presents as we are willing to calculate forward, we have given ourselves a new piece of exercise equipment. We had actually worn out the treadmill it replaces -- based, at least, on the trade-in value the fitness store was willing to offer. And now we are trying to add deposits to our physical "bank account." Gifts of health, as it were, to each other. So far the record is good: 5 consecutive days and counting -- if, that is, we can continue to afford the ibuprofen. It can hardly be considered, at this juncture, a habit, but we are gaining on it.

In the meantime, I'll blow out my candles with breath for which I'm profoundly grateful, along with all the other blessings that permeate my life as the very evidence and residue of grace. So, happy birthday to me: happy, happy, indeed. Thanks Mom and Dad. I couldn't have done it without you.

She Insists on Growing Up

I'm getting old enough to appreciate the prods -- my computer datebook popped up the reminder that today is my daughter's birthday -- but it's hard to imagine that I could forget. For 24 years her distinctive melody line has added texture and lilt to my song so profoundly that it would no longer be "my song" without it. Don't confuse that with perpetual harmony. Dissonance, I suppose, is an essential part of father-daughter music. Sometimes the rhythm has been double time; sometimes syncopations that have stretched my vibe; sometimes there have been multiple measures of rests. But it has been our music, and I continue to be blessed and animated by it, and grateful.

It's hard to allow her the transition from little girl to young woman. She, of course, would argue that transition occurred years ago and has long since shifted gears. I can't argue the fact chronologically. But I'm not looking with such objective eyes. I'm not a casual observer, after all. I've changed her diapers. I've held her broken arm. I've listened to her giggle while holding a new kitten, and watched her walk determinedly up the sidewalk to kindergarten. And a few other things. So while I intellectually acknowledge that she is all grown up, the rest of me is slow to recognize it.

And so it is that we will gather around a dinner table tonight, a circle of adults, and at least hum together "Happy Birthday." We'll talk about adult things, and adult plans and adult concerns, and I'll play along. Actually, I'll enjoy it immensely. But one small part of me will be wondering how we forgot the candles and when we'll start the games and where we'll put the new toys.

24. Happy birthday, my beautiful grown up little girl. Forgive me if I still worry about you out there in this great big wonderful-scary world. You can handle it, I'm sure, but it's not that easy to let you. In the meantime, know how profoundly grateful and awed that God has sung you into -- and altogether through -- my life.

Blessings.

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A Day Truly Made in Heaven

Singer-songwriter David Wilcox sings a song that one by one holds up for admiration the various attributes of a loved one -- sense of humor, hopefulness, compassion, willingness to listen, a taste for what will last. Ultimately, however, at the end of each stanza, he concludes that it is this person's kindness that he loves best. Perhaps the most romantic thing I have ever done (although that doesn't set a very high bar), perhaps the most heartfelt thing I have ever done was to learn the song and sing it on the day that I proposed to the woman who is now my wife. Now into our 10th year of marriage, I still adore her kindness, but have long since given up as hopeless the game of reducing my affections to a single favorite.

Today is her birthday -- the number of which is her business to tell, not mine -- and though she'll have some opportunity to unwrap a thing or two in celebration of the occasion, the gift, I'm almost wordlessly able to express, is mine. A smile so bright and warm it's as though the sun itself inhabits her face; an indomitable hope, a capacious heart, a radiant spirit, a playfully inquisitive affection for discovery...

...and, yes, kindness. Life in my company has afforded her more than ample opportunity to practice forgiveness, though her patient and thoughtful generousity in proffering it betrays little need for continuing improvement. But then creating the relational space in which all kinds of people can start over is part of the music she regularly and artfully makes.

Whatever else, then, today is about -- celebration, remembrance, laughter and pampering -- it is most of all a day of throat-lumping gratitude. It is her birthday, and for such a birth I haven't a clue how to adequately give voice to my thanks. I doubt this is what the psalmist had in mind when he affirmed it, but the words have taken on special and particular meaning for me these last ten January fifths:

This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it (Psalm 118)

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