Happy Birthday Dad

It's the annual October occurrence, known simply as Birthday Week. Birthday's in rapid succession: my birthday, Dad's and my maternal grandmother which also is - was - their wedding anniversary. Also sharing the October birthday month was my Dad's sister Marian and my paternal grandmother. For years it was just the three of us until the addition of spouses and their families: two brother-in-law and a great-niece sharing my Dad's birthday and a host of other family members adding to Hallmark's bottom line on my behalf.


2009 marked a milestone anniversary, Dad's 80th birthday. For the first time in fifteen years, our family gathered together to mark the occasion and rediscover the bonds that hold us together.


Laughter, food, hugs, smiles - shared by other family gatherings throughout history in small towns and large cities. Inside jokes, those special stories that end in gales of laughter no matter how many times the stories are told make each family unique and ours is no exception.


Dad - Happy Birthday and thank you. For your love and support, both given unconditionally and in generous amounts, "pressed down and running over." Thank you for providing your daughters with a firm foundation as well as sharing your love of Big Band music, Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett - football, cribbage and holiday traditions - memories of camp fires and tiki lights - Christmas carols and baptisms - all of which are now part of the fabric of who we are. Individually, we each share our own special memory of walking down the aisle on your arm.

As parents we have discovered yet another gift you have given our family - memories of time spent with Grandpa John.





In childhood, we press our nose to the pane, looking out. In memories of childhood, we press our nose to the pane, looking in. ~ Robert Brault

To the outside world we all grow old. But not to brothers and sisters. We know each other as we always were. We know each other's hearts. We share private family jokes. We remember family feuds and secrets, family griefs and joys. We live outside the touch of time. ~ Clara Ortega

Dad, your guiding hand on my shoulder will remain with me forever. ~ Author Unknown

My mom is a never ending song in my heart of comfort, happiness, and being. I may sometimes forget the words but I always remember the tune. ~ Graycie Harmon

We are inclined to think that if we watch a football game ...

we have taken part in it. ~ John Fitzgerald Kennedy

I love my father as the stars - he's a bright shining example and a happy twinkling in my heart. ~ Adabella Radici

Cows are amongst the gentlest of breathing creatures; none show more passionate tenderness to their young when deprived of them; and, in short, I am not ashamed to profess a deep love for these quiet creatures. ~ Thomas de Quincey

Chains do not hold a marriage together. It is threads, hundreds of tiny threads which sew people together through the years. ~ Simone Signoret

A man knows he is growing old because he begins to look like his father.

~ Gabriel Barcia Marquez

There's something like a line of gold thread running through a man's wordswhen he talk to his daughter, and gradually over the years it gets to be long enough for you to pick up in your hands and weave into a cloth that feels like love itself.

~ John Gregory Brown, Decorations in a Ruined Cemetery, 1994

Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family. Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one. ~ Jane Howard




Photographs Copyright © 2009 by Cindy Bergeron Scherwinski