Your Special Day

Every year on the eve of your birthday, I sit here and try to gather my words. What can I possibly say to you that I have not yet said? What can be new to you, who knows me so well, as if we were brother and sister - for in a way, we are ... ?!

It’s so easy to take for granted those who have been in our lives for longer than we are counting anymore ... Since you have been part of our lives since you were a teen, almost the age of your oldest son now, that would be longer than I count anymore ... There is something of a routine that settles in after knowing someone for a while that makes us comfortable, maybe too comfortable, with each other. The familiarity, the feeling of closeness takes over and we forget to stop and actually voice our feelings for one another. 

I can only hope that you know that I am grateful for everything you’ve ever been to this family, for sharing with us your beautiful children, and for loving all of us, with the good and the bad, and the helpless, hard-to-love bits ... I hope you know this today, and every day.

I look back at all the things we’ve shared over the years - good times, and bad, adventures and accomplishments, like our moves across the world, and many losses, too, the most painful of ones being those losses of the many loved ones we shared together.  I am grateful for all of it and for the way you melded into our family and have become such an integral part of it. I am grateful for your strength and honesty, your devotion to those you love. 

On this celebratory day, I want you to think back, way-way back when I was in college and you were in high school: we would go to the beach, you, my sister, your brother, friends, classmates,  and we’d spend every night drinking Vermouth and dancing till the wee hours of the morning in open air, in the salty, breezy soft air of the Black Sea coast. And we never felt tired. And we never felt hungover and we could never get enough of the fun ... I hope you find that happiness, that energy today and feed off of it. 

Here’s to you, sir! Have a glass of cheer and I promise I will too - to your health and so many more beautiful, happy years to come! Looking forward to our next get-together later this month and to continue to make many more memories together yet ...