Happy Birthday to Me!

 Birthdays are great except that with each one we get another year older tacked onto our life resume. I'm grateful to be reasonably healthy and able to celebrate my birthday at all - not everyone is that fortunate. Birthdays are always acknowledged by friends and family - with silly cards or sentimental notes, depending on the whim of the sender, and over the years I've had some pretty great gifts. This year I got a really special gift from my three sons. This year I think they went for sentimental - plus a fair portion of humor.

Years ago - like in the mid 1960s, our family was living on Church Street in St. Johnsbury. We rented for a short time the white house on the corner of Church and Cliff Street now owned by Richard Beck. It was our custom for the whole family to dress up for Easter Sunday and go to church (we went to church other Sundays, too, but Easter was a time for new duds for everyone!)

One Easter Sunday morning I posed the three kids on the front steps of the house on Church Street and took their picture. Over the years, we've laughed at those old photos often times, but now most are tucked away, out of sight. A while back, Bob asked to have some, so I gave a bunch to him. For my birthday, I got one of them back - in a "before and after" shot the three boys arranged. They got permission from Richard Beck to use his front steps and got Nate Somers to take their picture. Bob said they purposely went to Richard's early one morning in order to get the same shadows in their picture, only to find that there is now a big tree shading the front steps at that hour. They took the picture anyway. Jamie said he was sorry he didn't have any plaid trousers to wear, and with all of them being grown men now, it was not easy to position themselves the same as they were as little kids, but they did a great job and  I love it. I got a big laugh out of it (and teared up a bit, too) and it now has a place of honor in the kitchen. I giggle every time I look at it.  From left to right, Bob, Jamie and Bill Dimick - circa 1965 and 2020.

Thanks to Richard for allowing the three Dimick boys to invade his front steps, and Nate for taking their picture. It's definitely a keeper. Bill, Bob and Jamie - you're "keepers," too. You have made my life very interesting and still keep me laughing and appreciating all three of you. Thank you.