Anniversaries

Been away for awhile. Busy lives and all that, I am sure you understand. My brother flew in last weekend to help me celebrate becoming a Social Security recipient, not that I needed any reminders of how old I have become, but I welcomed his visit and we had a wonderful time.

It got me thinking of how important the year 2012 is to me, and not just because the world will end on December 21 according to the Mayan Calendar modern day pundits. So be good everyone, the end is nigh! Magic in the number: 12 - 21 - 20/12. You could play with that for the next 244 days and never notice the end until it hits you in the face.

It was fifty years ago on the 3rd that Wilt the Stilt Chamberlain scored 100 points in a single basketball game. We talk about sports records that will never be broken, and though it is always possible, this one seems pretty unlikely. There is, of course, Wilt;s other unofficial record to consider: he said he had sex with 15,000 different women. Do the math -- that would be one woman every night for 41 years and two months. That's every nigh, no breaks, no repeats, all one night stands. When did he have tome to practice basketball?

2012 also will mark the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. Julian Fellowes, the man who brought us Gosford Park and Downton Abbey, had written a four hour TV movie on the event to help mark the anniversary. I guess James Cameron's masterpiece movie isn;t the final word after all. That was fifteen years ago now. already, believe it or not!

Other anniversaries are more of a personal note. 2012 marks my 52nd birthday, just celebreated, and also the 60th anniversary of the Blokkers arriving in America. I would not be here but for my father's need to relocate in 1952. he died twenty years later, forty years ago this September. Diane's father would have turned 100 this year; her mother passed away (as did good friend Jim Bushaw) ten years ago this summer.

It has been five years since my brother and I went to Holland together on the only vacation I have ever taken without my wife in 37 years of amrriage. Three years have passed since the last time Di and I were there. On March 7 she and I will mark our first full year in Montana, and on May 18 my year probabtion for taking a $10 gift card out of the garbage will finally be over (I know the story is more complicated than that, but that story will be handed down in a different format -- as long as the Mayans, or rather the pundits, are wrong and I have enough time).

I have not seen most of you for a year now, some of you far longer than that. I miss you all and wonder how you are. May 2012 be a happy year for you, and remember that you are loved.