Tuesday, June 12, 2007
The big five oh! Part One: Setting the scene
I turned 50 this past Sunday, June 10th and had a party to celebrate it on Saturday. Unfortunately, and for different reasons, some of my best friends couldn’t make it, but the turnout was still nice.On Friday, my mother came in from England and my old friend and the subject of many unfulfilled youthful fantasies, Rosemary, came in from Chatham, NY. The former hadn’t been to NYC for 15 years and the latter for 26 years. In fact, until 2 weeks prior, we hadn’t seen each other for 26 years, nor spoken for 16. The birthday of both of my house guests is September 3rd. Rosemary is a small town girl – she grew up in Sanborn, NY which is so small that the only gas station in town when I was last there in 1980, had two pumps and no attendant - the residents each had a key which they inserted to start the gas flow. She was due to arrive at Penn Station at 7:48pm; a little over an hour after my Mum’s flight was to land at Newark. Fortunately, my son volunteered the airport run.
My day started well. I saw a young man on my morning commute wearing a Spurs (Tottenham Hotspur, that is) shirt, and took this as a good omen for the day ahead.
