One From the Heart

David's 75th Birthday

 I am writing this on the 17^th of March 2015—my 74^th birthday.  Good wishes are coming in from Facebook friends and others.

I received some actual cards; here they are on my mantel with a gift of roses.  The greetings are from four people who represent  215 years of friendship.

I have a date later to have dinner with my daughter, my son-in-law, and my four grandchildren.  I will take some pictures and post them here if I can once with this blog is published.

I told the plumbers who came to install a new radiator in my dining room today that it was a birthday present. They said they had never delivered a birthday gift before.

Some of today’s chance occurrences  gave my birthday a special significance, especially since the past year has not been without its challenges.

The words  “time” and “remember” kept coming up.

When I went down into the subway stop at 79^th Street and Broadway after an appointment this morning, I saw something I had never seen there before.  Here is a little snippet.  (I kept it short because I know that Blogger won’t let me upload more than a few seconds of film.)

After that, the words of that song played over and over in my head all the way home.  They are so emblematic of my marriage with my David.   Here is the whole song, sung by the incomparable Tony Bennett at the age of 78—the age David is now:

On the way from the subway to my front door, I passed the flower shop on my block.  They put out blossoms for people going by and have a signboard with quotes that change every day.  Here is what it said when I walked by with those song lyrics in my head.

When I sat down at the keyboard to write this blog, I had a plan for what I thought I would write.  But my experiences up till that moment had been pretty powerful and those, in conjunction with what happened next, made me jettison my previous idea.

I always play music while I am working at the computer.  I have a peripheral drive with literally tens of thousands of songs on it.  I play them on shuffle, so I never know what is coming next.  The first one to come up today was “Time Heals Everything,” from the Broadway show Mack and Mabel, which debuted the year David and I were married—1974.   Here it is sung by Bernadette Peters:

I hope you don't find this too sentimental.  I am a sentimental person.  And today, a random series of events told me that this is what I had to say.

Annamaria Alfieri