MountainMornings

We all hate to say good-bye to summer, although in the South summer does linger. Gardens get droopy as children wait for school buses at sunrise. Leaves begin their inevitable transformation while the last crepe myrtle blossoms rain down on my car. But instead of slowing down as temperatures cool, things speed up in our family. We are entering the season of the Birthday Party!

Or as I like to call us, those Christmas Party babies.

Most all of my family birthdays span August and September. And although Martha Stewart I am certainly not, I love to plan the celebration. One year the young Rocker had a treasure hunt on the beach for hundreds of rocks I’d painted gold. Because his birthday is in August, his classmates combined with beach club friends to make a mob scene. Another year, they all played roller hockey at the end of our street.

The Bride’s birthday would fall at the beginning of the school year and one year (around 10 or 11) we rounded up all her friends and stopped by the nearest beauty school for fun makeovers. Before that, we’d had clowns and games in our Berkshire backyard. I remember a Strawberry Shortcake cake. There was a certain New England pride some of us moms felt in doing the deed at home – a leftover martyr complex from our parent’s generation.

This year the Bride took the Love Bug to her first Taylor Swift concert for her birthday present, a rite of passage she is continuing since Bob started bringing our young daughter to Madonna’s Blond Ambition Tour at Madison Square Garden. I was not a big concert or band fanatic. I was never a groupie or a Dead Head or a Parrot Top for that matter. But Bob’s identity was forged at Woodstock, and so the tradition continues.

I listened to friends talk about the Jay-Z and Beyonce concert this past week, had coffee with a cousin who was attending the Keith Urban Graffiti U tour at the Bridgestone, and then last night heard all about Tay Tay from my grand daughter. That was this past weekend in Nashville!

Sometimes I wonder if I’m missing out on something. And I’d always like to slow down time. But over the years, I have seen the Yardbirds, the Stones, the Boss, Bob Dylan and Billy Joel and Sting as back-to-back piano men, and so my life is complete. The concerts I’ve cherished were at Tanglewood over a picnic supper. For now I’ll just tune my Sonos to Mozart and plan our 70th birthday trip to Italy. Wait SEVENTY? Ciao baby!

And what do you mean I’m the last birthday of the year?