My son, Kevin, turned forty on September 11. He’s never been particularly attached to birthday celebrations, so I wasn’t sure what to do about the occasion. In the end, I honored it by sending his girlfriend and him to a special, all expenses paid concert this past July.
But as August edged into September I wondered what Kevin was planning for his actual fortieth birthday. Was there to be a party with university colleagues and members of his band? Were he and his girlfriend going out for a private dinner? Was there a surprise in the offing?
By phoning his girlfriend, I learned none of these activities was planned. So then I called and asked Kevin if he wanted his brother, his brother’s partner, and me to come to Fargo and take him to dinner. He didn’t waste a second in responding, and his response was so out of character that I took it for real.
You see, “Awesome” usually isn’t in Kevin’s daily vocabulary. Neither are the efusive emails I’ve received since that phone call.
So we made plans and showed up on September 11 as the tribute to those fallen in the Twin Towers took place. Our celebration of life wasn’t meant to demean theirs. But my son laid claim to the date long before terrorists did, and he’ll never again be able to celebrate without the shadow of their actions falling across his day.
It was a week ago tonight I packed for this event. Since then life has intervened at a whirlwind rate as we all returned to our specific lives. Yet, another thank-you email from Kevin today reminded me how important it is to bring our separate lives together to celebrate family events.
We’re an academic, an almost ready for Social Security mom, and two entrepreneurs who squeeze twenty-six hours of work into a twenty-four hour day. We live hundreds of miles from each other. We sometimes don’t understand what the other is about. But for two days in Fargo last week, we remembered we were also family.
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