The Little One, my little niece, and me, all playing MarioKart at my parents' for the first birthday celebration of the season.
I divide my year into two roughly equal seasons: the Holiday Season and the Birthday Season.
The Holiday Season stretches from September through February, during which the days get shorter, the air colder, the leaves more colorful (brown is a color). We start playing Christmas music, unpack the electric menorah, and put up the holiday star. The Holiday Season smells like cold air, dry heat, and pine, and it feels like candy and thanksgiving and NFL football.
The Birthday Season comprises the remaining months of the year. During the Birthday Season, we celebrate all the birthdays of the year (except for my Beloved’s, whose falls during the Holiday Season). It used to begin on the first day of Spring, because the only birthday that fell in early March was my brother’s. But then my other brother married a March girl, and my Beloved and I had a March baby, and so now the first official celebration of the Birthday Season occurs early in March.
This year, we started off the season last Sunday at my parents’ place, with a whole-family Sunday-afternoon dinner, followed by chocolate cake and lots of candles, and a delectable semi-dry Riesling from Seneca Valley, NY. Then we hung around and took turns playing Mario Kart on my dad’s Wii. (Yes, you read that right.)
The next party usually would not occur until June, for C‘s (my sister-in-law) and my birthday. That would usually be followed the next month by my other brother’s and mothers, and the next month after that by C’s (my other daughter, who happens to have the same first initial as my sister-in-law).
But this year, my dad is hitting a birthday milestone. (I’ll let you guess which milestone.) And so we’re planning to get together in a couple of weeks for a Passover–Easter–Dad’s-Birthday get-together. (And probably more Mario Kart, too.)
I can hardly wait!
-TimK