Continuing what’s now become an All Saints’ Day tradition by going back to see what happened on my son’s birthday a decade ago.
11/1/09 was a Sunday, and Martha’s mother and sister were staying with us. Ben opened a few presents at the breakfast table before we headed to church.
My parents came to visit in the afternoon, for a fuller celebration. The boy might have received some Lego that day.
The theme for the cake that year was aquatic:
Those are candies that Martha made sitting on top of the cake–she’d bought some molds. There were just a few left over…
A couple of Saturdays later, we took Ben and two of his friends to the aquarium in Newport, KY, right on the Ohio River across from Cincinnati. Here he is on some sort of giant toad in a play area there:
Right outside the aquarium is a plaza, along with some surrounding shops. After we’d finished chilling with the sharks, penguins, and rays, the boys were wowed by a street magician plying his trade on the plaza.
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Happy birthday, Bud!
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We get to see Ben on his birthday this year–it happens that this is also Family Weekend at his college, so we’re heading out after I get done with my own classes. Martha’s made a cake big enough to feed all the guys on his floor.
There’s a small lake in the middle of the campus, and it seems to be de rigueur for birthday celebrants to be tossed into it. It will be in the 30s tonight when they get around to “laking” Ben, but I think he’s actually looking forward to it a reasonable amount–it’s not like it can be avoided.
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In the years after I left home, my parents would do their best to call me and talk for a few minutes on my birthday at the exact time of day when I was born (fortunately, it was late morning and not something like 3:00am). Now that Ben’s begun that phase of his life, at some point I may attempt to see how well he’d abide such a thing. His official birth time isn’t all that different from mine, about 30 minutes later. I’m not in class this morning at that time, but he will be. Maybe some other year…
The Music of My Life 