Patty’s Ponderings: Twelve and Counting!

There we are sitting around the dinner table for another one of our extended family 'Sunday suppers', eating, talking and laughing. We're now on our third celebration of my niece's 30th birthday, when the subject of my birthday comes up.

For most of my adult life, whenever that date rolled around, I wasn't around...here, (Sioux Falls).  I'd always shoot up to Montana and spend time in some of my favorite places there, including my birthplace, the city of Missoula. It was a way of celebrating my birthday, while somehow negating it. Love the celebration, hate the passage of time.

Naturally my niece and nephew wondered if I would be here this year. I reminded them that due to limited finances, I'd been present on my birthday for the last two years. They also verbalized that they  had no idea how old I really was. This was a very carefully crafted brainwashing that I began when they were tiny.  When they were small children and they'd ask how old I was, I would always say, "twelve" and they bought it. They're still buying it, God love them. Now if only they would stop aging!