Ninety

For the topic of this week’s blog entry, I have two options. I could write about the dead fox in my garage, or I could write about my mom’s birthday party. On the off chance that someone from my family might actually look at my website, I best write about the party.

My mom turned ninety on October 12. She was one of sixteen kids, and she is one of five who are still alive. She has outlived my dad by more than forty years. She is healthy, her brain works fine, and she lives independently with my stepdad.

As part of the celebration, my siblings and I chartered a trolley and toured Door County. With thirty of my mom’s family and friends, we climbed the tower in Peninsula State Park, we painted our names on the Hardy Gallery building in Ephraim, and we sampled wine at Anchored Roots Winery in Egg Harbor. Only half of us did the tower, as the other half were as old as my mom and had mobility issues that kept them from even using the wheelchair ramp.

For me, the winery was the highlight of the day. We chose it because it had live music on an outdoor patio. I expected a folk singer, but it turned out to be Cathy Grier, a bluesy guitarist who was more Bonnie Raitt than Kate Wolf. She invited my mom on stage and asked her the secret to a long life. The question would have stumped me, but my mom, without skipping a beat, said, “Having fun and enjoying an occasional drink.”

After the tour, we returned to my mom’s house in Dyckesville, where the number of celebrants more than doubled. Tables and chairs had been set up in the three-stall garage, food and drink lined two of the walls, and a giant tv screen was put in one corner so guests could catch glimpses of the Packer game.

The trolley tour and garage party took place on Sunday. On Monday, the celebration continued on a much smaller scale. My sister Diane had invited Charles and Irina, friends from Belize, to the celebration. They run an open-air beachside restaurant on Ambergris Caye, and they brought with them lobster and hogfish* for a seafood barbecue. Charles showed me a different way to clean fish, a technique that bisects the skull and leaves half of the head on each fillet. He then grilled the fillets on one side only (skin-side down), and we spooned the flesh off of the skin when we ate. 

Ninety is a big turn on the odometer. It signifies beating the odds. I don’t expect to live that long; I am not sure I want to live that long. I was, however, happy to celebrate my mom’s ninetieth, largely because she was happy to celebrate it.

* An interesting factoid about hogfish is that they cannot be caught with hook and line. They won’t take a bait and must be speared.