Happy, Happy Birthday, Baby...

Tomorrow, on November 24th, my father will turn 67. A few weeks down the road, my birthday will arrive in the wake of his for the 40th time. But in honor of my dad, a man who keeps the greeting card industry in business but rarely receives any birthday recognition of his own, I would like to revisit a different birthday: his of 27 years ago.

When my father turned 40, my mother threw him a surprise party with a 1950s theme. There was a live band playing all of my father's favorite songs, and hours upon hours of dancing, and everybody got all dressed up. My dad, who had arrived in his regular clothes, was given the proverbial white sport coat and, I believe, a pink carnation by way of transformation. I remember my parents' friends in matching leather motorcycle jackets, my aunts in poodle skirts, cousins in sweater sets and rolled up jeans and my own outfit: a turquoise taffeta circle skirt and a white cotton blouse tied at the waist, a black velvet ribbon in my high ponytail. I was twelve, but thirteen was just around the bend, and I felt very glamorous to be at an adult party with dancing and live music and so many grown-ups, grown-ups who seem to me in my mind's eye like sophisticated creatures from another planet, eons older than I am now, will ever be.

How is it possible that all of those grown-ups were only forty years old? If I close my eyes I can see my father calling requests out to the band, doing the Twist in the middle of the dance floor, his hair still mostly black, the room surrounded by his friends and loved ones. The event itself was a perfect incarnation of my dad, a man who doesn't actually seem much older now than he did then, who still can twist as though American Bandstand were filming, would still cut a dashing figure in a white sport coat and who has raised two daughters with perfectly imperfect unconditional love that has given them a foundation on which all else is built and without which nothing much would stand.

The funny thing is that I felt that way at twelve. I remember leaning against a wall with a cup of soda, admiring the way my skirt glinted under the lights, and then watching my father dancing with my mother to a "slow dance," the kind I still, at nearly thirteen, avoided whenever I could. "They look so young," I really do remember thinking, swishing my skirt to make the taffeta rustle, watching the couples swaying to the mellow sounds of the music I had been taught to love by my dad.

If we are lucky, life is long and complicated. We celebrate and commemorate, we suffer and agonize, we triumph and fail, we persevere. I don't mind turning forty. In spite of all those corny greeting cards, it doesn't really seem that old; it never did. And as I always tell my grandmother, who will soon be 94, growing old seems, if not a walk in the park each day, certainly preferable to the alternative.

I think of my father's 40th birthday not just because my own is impending but because in so many ways he cannot see, my father is still that same man dancing, the last man on the dance floor for the love of the music, the man the band stays late for just because they like him, the man who again and again makes me feel like I am loved, and appreciated, and admired, and loved.

Happy birthday, Dad. This one--and all of them, really--is for you. Thank you for teaching me that every day is a possibility. I love you. And don't forget, ever, ever: This is the first day of the rest of your life.