October 3, 2015
A year ago, my wonderful wife Ella took me on our first-ever trip to Block Island for my 50th Birthday. A 50th Birthday is a significant milestone in a person’s life and needs to be celebrated in a special way. Being the type of person that I am, a surprise party would provide 99 percent likelihood for disaster. The trip to Block Island with just Ella and I was the perfect way to celebrate that major milestone for me.
This year, I turned 51. A 51st Birthday is not what I consider a milestone event and keeping things very low key is the way I like to roll in these situations. Like last year, this was again the perfect Birthday celebration for the person I am and I decided to write a quick note to describe what happened and why I liked it so much.
It all began yesterday, October 2, 2015, which happened to be my late Grandmother’s birthday back in 1920. I took a vacation day from work in honor of my Birthday, which was going to fall on a Saturday this year. Ella took me to lunch at Lenny & Joe's Fish Tale in Westbrook, CT. Though we have always liked the place, we hadn’t been there in a couple of years as we explored numerous other local options. The return was quite pleasant with great food and great service.
This morning, my actual Birthday, began with a 10:30 partner workout at Shoreline CrossFit. As I walked into the gym with my partner, Ella, I immediately received warm smiles with Happy Birthday greetings from fellow CrossFitters Zach Shepherd and Erin Brown. There was no major fuss or hoopla thrown at me and the simple but sincere acknowledgment from the two of them further lifted my already high spirits.
After CrossFit, there was a stop at the grocery store before returning home. This was before noon. As Ella went into the store, I grabbed my iPhone and found a Happy Birthday message from my college freshman son, Martin, who has been gone a month now. Getting a message from a college freshman before noon was quite a pleasant surprise for me.
Upon returning home from CrossFit, and the trip to the grocery store, it was time to have some lunch and check in on my FaceBook messages. Waiting on my Wall for me to read were well over 100 well wishes from family and friends far and wide! Two of the messages were from fellow CrossFitters, Alicia Wills and Jessica Herr, who said they wished they had known it was my birthday while I was at CrossFit. I responded in sincere gratitude to each of them for their post-CrossFit messages with, “I'm glad we got to spend an hour of it [my Birthday] together even if you didn't know!”
The day was capped off with the pre-planned family outing to my favorite local places for dinner and dessert, Rocky's Aqua on the Long Island Sound and Niko's Ice Cream and Confectionery Co. on Main Street in Clinton, CT. Once we were seated at Rocky’s, Sarah came to our table to greet us, even though we weren’t at a table assigned to her, because she had remembered us from a previous visit when we sat at one of her tables. As we were ready to leave Rocky’s, I wrote a brief note of thanks on the bill to Katie regarding the wonderful Birthday experience she facilitated as our server, though we hadn’t told her during dinner that we were there to celebrate my Birthday. Before we made it out of Rocky’s, Katie caught up to me and said I should have told her it was my Birthday so they could have embarrassed me with a rousing rendition of “Happy Birthday”. After I informed her that not telling her was by design, she handed me two tokens that would entitle us to two free drinks the next time we were there, which I’m sure will be within a month. These sincere gestures of kindness are worth much more to me than any material gifts could ever be.
I like when celebrations for me are simple and relaxing with minimal hoopla. Brief but sincere “Happy Birthday” acknowledgments and gestures of kindness beyond what I have come to expect from life truly made this among the best off-year Birthdays I have ever had. In fact, the last such Birthday celebration I readily recall is from 1996 when I was away from my family and a group of very new friends took it upon themselves to arrange a quiet celebration at a nearby restaurant.
Days like today make me realize that the best gifts in life cost little more than a few seconds to a few minutes of sincere, friendly time and effort. Today, I am feeling blessed and I thank all who took part in making me feel that way! May you all have the opportunity to feel as blessed as I have been on this day!
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