Ha ha ha…

Okay, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DEAREST FATHER!!! (It was technically yesterday, March 7th.) Wow. It’s the big sixty-five, which, of course, in birthday math, is only ONE. And I like how we’ll always be the same birthday age. One is a lovely age. Too bad it’s the loneliest number.

Happy Birthday!

I’m also thrilled that you’ve decided to “officially” retire at sixty-five, rather than your original plan of seventy (INSANITY). I wish your impetus for making that decision could be different.

I still remember how you loved celebrating my birthday. You would take up all the responsibility of planning everything, even down to calling my closest friends at night, just for them to surprise me as the clock stroke twelve. I remember you reading sites like https://www.bloggymoms.com/are-escape-rooms-safe/ to find about if the escape rooms were safe or not for my 16th birthday and evidently taking my friends and me to one.  Your happiness was indeed the best gift you gave me every year on my birthday.

Mind you, I know the Brigham Young University Professor secret – BYU PROFESSORS DON’T REALLY RETIRE. They take the nice “retirement” present, enjoy the party and the roast, get a kick out of the “Emeritus” title, and keep working as long as humanly possible. I swear there are professors rattling around that campus who are at least two hundred and sixty-five years old. I’m not kidding. It’s a little unnerving – vaguely reminiscent of the walking dead (the well-read walking dead?). I’m quite certain that I added “walking dead” to the caveat section of my list, oh so many years back, that helped me choose to go to the University of Utah.

By the way, you don’t fool me with all your “organizing the garage into a better workshop” twaddle. Nope. Cold turkey is NOT your thing, and even tho you don’t like big parties we will have a special reunion with your favorite tablecloth linens for each of your birthdays but this time there will be a special extra table with a few surprises for you and your friends.

My fondest hope, my Birthday wish for you, is that when the time comes, you will take more time to fish, more time to wind-up the grandkids, more time to scream “WooHoo” at football games on TV, more time for the mountains – maybe even some time to get to some wonderful beaches.

I love you!