Old Man

My wife is great about keeping family traditions alive. One tradition is breakfast-in-bed, especially with a cup of coffee - a Swedish childhood custom that Jan has kept for our family as well. Even our kids got a

Baked eggs, English muffins, fruit & yogurt

small cup with their breakfasts (each had a small cup of their own - a tradition from both sides of our families), and now they are doing the same for our grandchildren - even the coffee as well.(1) Her birthday this past November was the second without any of our children around - I have followed suit. With our kids' ages ranging from nearly 24 to 31, we are getting a sense of what our folks are experiencing with their children in their late-50's and early-60's. She still brought me my coffee, but for practical sake, we ate our breakfast instead at our dining table where we could watch the birds come and go from the backyard feeder. The baked egg dish is a favorite recipe from the Sand Lake Country Inn on the Oregon coast - a bed and breakfast we enjoyed many times. We added up the years, and have been celebrating birthdays together for 41 years. She is adept at making it all work together: thematic cards and gifts, breakfast, homemade dinner.

I remember the line from the first Indiana Jones movie: "It's not the years, [honey,] it's the mileage." That seems an appropriate way for sizing up time. I think it was about when we turned 50 that even though we still thought of ourselves as young, it seemed the situations we would run into were Grown Up Problems. When I woke up this morning, for some reason I thought of the Neil Young song Old Man. With the wonder of laptop computers, and YouTube, instant blast from the past at the finger tips. Click here to hear the song from a 1971 performance, and then here, for a rendition sung by an old-man-version of Neil Young 40 years later. A recent relief effort by the co-founder of Farm Aid can be viewed by clicking here.
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(1) We hear that our grand daughter Cambria, four years old, wants coffee each morning, so her mom gives a milk with a dash of coffee from the pot.