Yesterday was Jenny's birthday. Birthday's are very important in our family. Growing up my parents would always get a birthday cake, sing happy birthday and generally make you feel special, even into adulthood. I believe this Hirsch family tradition goes back even further. Somehow I recall my mom descibing birthday parties they had at their parents house. While other kids undoubtedly got bigger presents we got love and affection. And those last infinitely longer. Now on the other hand growing up birthdays were much different in Jenny's house. Everyone would eat separately. Only after dinner would her father come to the table for the robotic rendition of happy birthday. Then after 30 seconds everyone would retreat back to doing whatever they were doing. Leaving for a pretty empty feeling. One of Jenny's most happy birthdays, if not her favorite was the first year after we were married when we went down to Whitestone right around her birthday, my parents made her a little birthday party. She was blown away. Like eating dinner all together at the table it was not something she was used to. I'm confident when Daniel and Devin are adults and have children they will continue this birthday tradition. As birthdays go yesterday was shaping up to be not exactly an A+ birthday. I woke up around 8AM to find Jenny lying on the floor in the living roo with a painful neck. Also she was awake stressing about my lack of voice. She was obviously worried it will never return. Since she pays the bills I know this has been a real concern. She has evened mentioned losing the house. I did my best to reassure her everything will be okay and sent her up to bed. When she went back to sleep me, Daniel, Devin and mom ran some birthday errands. Devin wanted to go to Delish the New York bakery we like to get some bakery cookies. I wanted to get some photo paper to print out some pictures for the frame I got her. And we had to pick up the birthday cake. The way our luck has been going lately things are about to go from bad to worse. When we got home while attempting to do something simple like print up pictures I managed to destroy the printer. So the birthday girl came down to a destroyed printer. While upset she calmly took apart the printer. Looked to see what the problem was and put it back together. And lo and behold she fixed it!!!! I'm really blown away at her ability to seemingly fix anything. She liked her presents especially the cookies. Since her neck was still bothering her she did not feel like going anywhere for her birthday. So we spent the afternoon watching Billy the Exterminator and some other shows. At this point I felt really guilty. In my eyes this was not turning out to be a real memorable birthday. For dinner we had Flippers pizza(which for chain pizza is actually pretty good). After the cake came out and she got the singing of happy birthday from everyone but me something totally unexpected happened to totally turn the day around. Jenny's dad came down and handed her a birthday card. While mom picked out the card it was two very touching paragraphs that he wrote in the card that made it special. It was words Jenny had been waited 41 years to hear. It reminded me of the Garth Brooks song If Tomorrow Never Comes. If he has a heart attack tomorrow Jenny has his thoughts on her card. It meant so much tears started going down her cheecks. It made me so happy to see. It was the last thing in the world I ever expected. But like the birthday parties from when I was growing up, its not the presents that are memorable its the love you get from your family. Something sadly Jenny had never REALLY felt on her special day from her father.
Also this morning I finished Animal Farm by George Orwell. Reading continues to help keep me sane while I'm out of work. I have found I'm always so much happier when I'm reading a book. Its my mothers theory of you have to have something to look forward to when you wake up in the morning. In the past 5 weeks I've read the following books. Animal Farm and 1984 by Orwell, The Game by Ken Dryden which is the best book I've ever read written by a athlete, The Book of Fate and the First Counsel by Brad Meltzer, Going Rogue by Sarah Palin, House Justice by Mike Lawson and Decision Points by George W. Bush. This list is pretty typical of the books I like. Political thrillers, biographies , classics and sports books. Next I think I'm going to read Army of One which is a biography on Rush Limbaugh
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