1. For my birthday today, I wanted a day to myself (well, with Copper and Gibbs, too).
You see, the week of December 21-27 is always an intense one. Debbie's birthday is on the 21st -- and this year she flew to New Jersey/New York on her birthday. Our wedding anniversary is December 24th. We've been married twenty-seven years now. Jesus was born on the 25th and Christmas Day in our family extends to the 26th when we have a second day of gift exchanging and at dinner time we gather for our annual international dinner when we eat the food and learn about the traditions of a country Carol chooses. This year our country was New Zealand.
When my birthday rolls around on December 27th, I'm ready for some solitude. I enjoyed our dinners on Christmas Day and on December 26th, but I wanted less intensity on the 27th.
I spent my birthday in the house. The only person I saw was Carol. Thanks to my kidney transplant, I am barred from keeping Copper's litter box scooped, so Carol dropped in and took care of it this afternoon.
I rested.
I napped.
I made a green salad.
I stared.
I reflected.
I looked back on Christy's knee replacement just over a year ago and thought about her recovery.
I reminisced about family dinners.
I cherished the memory of twice being asked to officiate services at the Mountain View Congregational Church across the street. In February, I officiated Taylor and Cosette's wedding and, in September, I officiated the Celebration of Life memorializing Don Knott.
A beginning.
A farewell.
I thought a lot about the good fortune I experienced in my 71st year.
Debbie and I enjoyed our 27th year of marriage.
A surgical team at Providence Sacred Heart successfully transplanted a kidney into my lower left abdomen.
I've recovered remarkably well with no setbacks so far.
It's taken time, but Debbie and I have worked together to make our house a place of deep contentment for Copper, primarily with the addition of a simple pet gate and with me learning, after a miscommunication with a nurse at the hospital, that Copper and I could spend all the time we wanted together in the same room and in the same bed.
We really, really want to be together.
Copper's growing happiness and contentment over the last several months has uplifted me profoundly.
I joined a weekend celebration with longtime friends in western Montana to celebrate our having turned 70 in 2023 and 2024.
I joined a celebration in Eugene of Russell Shitabata's retirement from Lane Community College and, in addition, got to spend time with a bunch of awesome friends in Eugene, with Roger Pearson in Salem, and with Terry and Nancy Turner in Gladstone.
There's more.
Believe me, there's more.
For example, I had a superb weekend in Seattle hanging out with Bill andDiane, Mark andPeter, and Hugh and Carol. On Sunday I got to go to a benefit concert that featured a wide array of Seattle musicians performing songs by Bill Davie.
Twice I ate Thai food with Colette in Pendleton on trips hanging out at the Wildhorse Resort with longtime friends from Kellogg.
There's still more. Believe me.
I take none of this good fortune for granted.
I am unceasingly grateful.
2. Pretty much on purpose, I've created a gap in my life, especially since about July.
Because I've been reading so many books, I have not been watching movies.
That's the gap.
In fact, for the last several months, our television has been unplugged.
Late this afternoon, I plugged it in.
Judy/Sparky wrote me an email recently in which she said, simply, "The movie Conclave resonates."
I responded that I would watch it and tonight I did.
From the beginning, the movie's art direction, costuming, and cinematography riveted me. I especially enjoyed the movie's loving attention to physical details and color in the world of the Vatican. So many of those details are centuries old, iconic, traditional, and enduring.
In part, Conclave is a movie about the relationship between the past and tradition and the fact that the Church functions in an ever changing world. Is it the responsibility of the Church to preserve and enforce, with certainty, the practices of the past regarding vernacular, women, sexuality, world religions and other pressing matters or is it the responsibility of the Church to be elastic, flexible, in an ongoing state of doubt and exploration with a willingness to make changes?
When the movie ended, I began an hours long contemplation that hasn't ended about the nature of what the newly elected Pope in the movie calls "God's handiwork".
I can't say more about the movie and "God's handiwork" because I don't want to spoil the movie's plot.
I'll just say that taken together, the questions the movie raises about doubt/certainty and the nature of God's handiwork have been on my mind for years and this movie got them churning again.
One last comment about the movie: I love movies that feature actors who are older -- say over about sixty years old. The sixty-four year old Ralph Fiennes gave a sterling performance in Conclave as did the other older actors I came into the movie familiar with: John Lithgow, Isabella Rossellini, and Stanley Tucci. So did the several other older cast members who were new to me.
By the way, my love for watching aged actors work is not a new thing for me -- it didn't start when I got old. I saw Spenser Tracy, Melvyn Douglas, Katherine Hepburn, Gloria Swanson, Bette Davis, Jessica Tandy, Hugh Cronyn, and many other actors give moving and absorbing performances that I loved in movies long before I became an old man myself.
3. On the days leading up to my birthday, I gave a lot of thought to what I wanted to eat, by myself, for dinner tonight.
I thought about going out, but nothing in the Silver Valley sounded inviting to me -- that's on me, not the restaurants here -- but homemade chicken soup/stew sounded awesome.
I've already described what I did on Thursday to make this stew in a previous post and tonight I heated myself up a bowl.
I am really happy that the changes I made to the recipe worked beautifully. I think I like this stew better without the tomatoes and the noodles are a great substitution for the potatoes. I also like the seasonings I used better than what the recipe calls for.
I still have plain bagels in the freezer from Beach Bum Bakery and eating one of those toasted went with my bowl of chicken stew perfectly.
Rest.
Quiet.
Sleep.
Copper.
Gibbs.
Gratitude.
Aged actors.
Theological questions to ponder.
A delicious chicken stew.
Wow!
A Happy Birthday, indeed!
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