And he was there ---

Well, the 20th birthday of my elder son has come and gone while he was gone. He says it has become an unintended tradition for him to be away from home (and I mean FAR) on his special day. This makes me want to let out the biggest and most authentic WAAAAAHHHH you can possibly conjure.

Here’s how it started. His high school does a great January thing called “J Term”, in which the kids can do internships, take unique classes, go on mission trips or go on school sponsored trips for two weeks and get a grade for it. It is a fabulous concept (except when it takes your child elsewhere on his bday). As I have mentioned previously, Cool Mr. A has a thing for Chicago and independently secured an internship there. He worked out a plan to stay for the 2 weeks with his aunt and uncle and ride the train downtown to his internship site. This place was a writing institute which helps kids after school and in the summer. It worked very well and he loved it. And he was there on his 17^th birthday.

The next year he saved up his money (which we matched) to go on a school trip to Ireland, England, and Wales. This was a remarkable trip which he thoroughly enjoyed and still often references. Dublin was a pretty wonderful city, said he. And he was there on his 18^th birthday.

The next year he had graduated high school and started college. Several of his good friends went their separate ways, but he had plans to visit his good friend who now studies at the University of Chicago. He rode the train many hours to see the sights with a friend he has known since birth. He got to see her school and meet all her new friends and had a marvelous time. And he was there on his 19^th birthday.

This year he and a roommate saved their hard-earned money and bought train tickets and scalped concert tickets to see Weezer’s Memories Tour. He stayed in a youth hostel and on a dorm floor of some internet friend (YIKES) and walked all over the place, eating Chicago-style hot dogs and deep dish pizza. He said it was great. (I wondered, though, if the internet friend was a fake person who might have really wanted his kidney . . . “the difference in our generations”, he says.) And he was there on his 20^th birthday.

Now I see. Sorta hard to go back to pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey after all that. I guess when he got old enough to be in charge of his own birthday party, he grabbed it! Now he is back at school. I am sad about it, too

Happy Belated Birthday, Cutie Pie.