I’m hiding from another birthday. I’ve decided I have had enough, so I quit. The problem with hiding is I can hardly go anywhere without finding someone who knows me. No matter how hard you try, you’ll always run into a person you know.
I once had the pleasure of meeting Skip Kadar when he joined a Coast Guard Auxiliary Flotilla I headed. The group wanted to expand from Port Austin to Harbor Beach. Skip was instrumental in making the effort possible.
It had been years since we saw each other, but my wife ran into him at a writer’s meeting in Islamorada, Fla.
She discovered he spent winters just a few miles down the road from our winter home. They made a lunch date and we met up.
I have been working on publishing a book and learned that Skip has published eight very successfully. After catching up on each other’s lives the past several years, Skip and his wife, Karen, gave us a lot of good tips.
What a pleasant surprise and proof that, “It’s a small world.” I shared with Skip an encounter I had last year with a Bad Axe businessman at a fresh vegetable stand near my winter home. He also had ran into him and we both agreed about the above remark that it’s a small world. Meeting up with Skip had no bearing on my hiding out because of my birthday, I did not have to hide, the subject of age never came up. Proof that, “Age really doesn’t matter” either.
Even though I was in hiding, it did not stop the inevitable — I got cards and gifts from dear friends and family and a good pal invited me over for a spare rib dinner, yeah! The day will slip by this week and nothing will change, I won’t have another grey hair. I may lose another one, but who will notice? By the time this column goes to print my birthday will be over. I’ll still be moaning about my sore spots, complaining about the price of gas, but I won’t be able to whine about my birthday rolling around.
I’m looking forward to my return to Huron County (when you warm it up some more). I’m anxious to see what’s left under all that snow and the tough winter. I look forward to enjoying my northern friends and family nearby. Restful evenings sitting looking out at Lake Huron from a daughter’s home (I have a choice of two).
I’ll be watching the Saturday morning parade go by the front of my home as hundreds of people head to our Port Austin Farmers Market. Their return trips are really amusing because they have more to carry than hands to carry it. Once in a while, someone asks if they can leave their packages on my picnic table in the yard while they go get their car or drop a load and come back for the rest. On market day, everyone is usually smiling and friendly. They stop at the antique shop across the street if they haven’t found all they need.
I hope all will be as it always is in Port Austin when I return. I’m sure no one will even know I skipped a birthday — and who really cares anyway?