Many More Years of This Day

First it was my wife, Joan, who wished me a happy birthday and asked how it felt. I hadn't noticed any change I said.

Perhaps later in the day. Perhaps not, really.

It was Rege next, who shouted it out while I was in the bathroom. And then he was gone to school.

He's a big boy now -- a man, he insists. Not the skinny lad he was when he was littler -- before all the iron pumping and the rugby (like Kwach). I myself was into basketball at that age, but so do some things go. As others don't.

Then Kwach, the eldest, wished me before he too rushed -- to work.

Then Chikka -- only girl in the house (beside her mother, that is):

-- How old do you feel?

-- Eh?

-- How old do you fee-eel?

-- forty two! (without hesitation)

-- Yeah, you're as old as you feel.

-- Sometimes I feel like 25. (Was I stretching it?)

-- Ha ha ha!

Her mother, beside her at the dressing table, took note of that, with a chuckle spiced with her take on this day. And she added, besides:

-- I feel like...exactly 22.

-- That's the way (I added)

Though what I should really have said, if I was into that kind of talk, was, "Yenyewe!"

By which token she was even younger nineteen days ago! Perhaps nineteen at heart.

In my house, we eat a lot of cake in February, for some reason! In my father's house there were not so many rooms -- though we added some.

February is a nice and cosy month, most of the time. Certainly for Februarists! Stretched by the savouring, it ends none-too-soon. Too much sugar. Spoilsports, I venture to say, are the exception that affirm the rule -- when we shutter our windows and remain quietly inside. In the creeping shade that's creeping all across Africa, quietly inside.

And none-too-soon.

And then there are other events which do not spoil but simply be, tagging with contending, inescapable reality days such as this: Like (Joan's) Uncle George's passing this very same day, revealed to us as we drove to work.

Everyone I know that mentioned his name called him Uncle.

Lucky the day that ends as it had begun. And lucky those that see it through. Things, so many things, happen.



__________________________________________
P.S: Brian, who hadn't woken up when we left, and who opened the door for us without a word when we returned home at nine in the night, comes to me some twenty minutes into nine (can you see the conspiracy?) with a smile in his face and an envelope (with a signed card) in his hand:

-- Here's a surprise birthday card (he/they surprise me alright).