One afternoon, when my brother and I were about 5 and 8, respectively, our mother picked us up from school in the family Volvo. She then drove down the road about five hundred feet before announcing that she wasn’t our mother, but rather an alien, who had come to kidnap us.

Obviously, a debate about this ensued, with my brother and me insisting that she was, in fact, our mother, and her insisting, no, in fact, she was an alien, but that the other aliens had just done a remarkably good job in making her look precisely like our mother. The debate raged for nearly the entire ride home, with my mother holding out just long enough for my brother and I to start developing serious doubts.

To this day, I’m not entirely sure what possessed her to do that, but if she were to do it again, I also wouldn’t be terribly surprised. Because, while she’s logical and organized, my mother also jumps on beds and pushes people into swimming pools without warning.

Or, at least, without much warning; by now, my brother and I have both learned to recognize that certain gleam in her eyes which serves as the signal for both of us to run for our lives.

Apparently, my mother inherited this troublemaking streak from her own mother, who once, while measuring her for a skirt she was shortening, poked my mom in the posterior with a pin, “just to see what would happen.”

So, on her birthday (and, yes, astute readers, her, my, and my father’s birthdays do all fall within the span of a week), to any readers who have been following along with self-aggrandizement and wondering what the hell is wrong with me, I say: go ask my mom. Much as she’d deny it, her genes clearly account for at least half of the whack-job traits I possess today.

As left on her answering machine while they were apparently headed down to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk for caramel apples:

Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday to you,
Your husband’s the one who looks like a monkey,
But you smell like one so you probably shouldn’t laugh at him too much.

xoxo

j

I was six years old in 1986 when Haley’s Comet passed over Palo Alto. It came overhead at about 4:00 in the morning, and I was there watching it, atop one of the Stanford hills near Highway 280, with my father.

My father had woken me, had driven us through the early morning March frost, and had climbed with me to the top of the tallest hill we could find, away from noise and light pollution, next to a single barren oak that I can still for some reason vividly remember.

We stood there, and we watched Haley’s inch along overhead, and my father told me that Haley’s wouldn’t come around for another 75 years, that he wouldn’t be alive to see it, but that he had brought me out that early morning so that I might, at age 81 or 82, be one of those few people lucky enough to see it twice in their lives.

I think of that morning sometimes, and it makes me think of all the selfless, wonderful, giving things my father did while my brother and I were growing up, and that he still does today.

So, each July 14th, on his birthday, I hope that at least some small measure of all that giving turns back his way, and that he gets exactly the day and the toys and the fun and the love and the adventure that he’s hoping for.

So, to my father:

Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday to you,
You look like a monkey,
No, seriously, you look like a monkey, especially given the ridiculous amount of body hair you have.

xoxo

j