Birthday 71

It's entirely impossible that I'm 71 years old. I have lived longer than both of my grandfathers (my paternal one, Charles Dyer, died before I was born).

And--appropriately--last night I started feeling crummy, went to bed at 6 p.m., felt crummy-ish all night, got up about 9:30 this morning. Then had to go out to the local University Hospitals Lab to get some blood work done. [Cue: Music--"Happy Birthday"]

Each year I like to post these two images--images of letters my parents wrote to me when I was born on Nov. 11, 1944. My mom wrote her words in my baby book; my dad was in Europe with the U. S. Army, six months after D-Day, doing you-know-what. It took a while for the news of my mom's safe delivery to reach him. (We were living with her parents, by the way, in the upstairs apartment to their home at 1609 E. Broadway in Enid, Okla.) My older brother, Dickie, would turn three in December, and as he's told me countless times: His life was never the same! (A lesson I would learn when little brother, Davi, was born in 1948.)

There a a few other images here, too--Dickie and I on a sled outside my grandparents' home (as I said, we were upstairs, and my earliest memories are looking out that upstairs window between the two little fir trees), Dad in uniform, Mom holding newborn me with a worried Dickie looking on.

I lost my dad in 1999, but Mom, 96, is still with us, and I'll be calling her later today. And we will have dinner this evening with our son, his wife (Melissa), their two great boys, Logan (10) and Carson (6).

And--of course--Joyce, who, for me, is all in all.