Happy Birthday

We interrupt this blog to wish my mother a happy birthday.

I will not be there to celebrate. However, as that is almost entirely her fault, hold the violins and/or the admonishing clucks.

You see, if not for her insistence on moving to Italy for a year when I was a teenager, I might very well still be living in Somewhere, USA and available to present the cake. (A lot of people really like Somewhere, USA, by the way. I'm not knocking it. I hear they have an excellent orchestra and plans for the bike path expansion are progressing. Plus there's that new Starbuck's opening, a block and a half closer.)

In any case, I find myself, today, in Berlin, not Somewhere, USA. Thus, my inability to celebrate in person. And it's her doing. Thanks to her seemingly limitless spirit of adventure (and perhaps not knowing any better), 1985 and 1986 found my mom, my sister and me living in a small apartment in a large villa overlooking Florence.

Fast forward to 2007, when I called to tell her I was leaving a pretty darn good job in Berlin to take a year off and do nothing but float around Europe. About a week later I got a card from her in the mail reiterating how excited she was about my decision and how sure she was that it was the right thing to do. You can't ask for a lot more than that, folks, admit it.

I always have a hard time finding the right birthday present for her, because she gave me the best ones I can think of: the understanding that our experience of humanity need not be defined by where we happen to have been born, and the confidence to test that understanding.

Happy birthday, mom. Vielen dank, grazie et merci.

Love,

Andrew

P.S. For the record, it is unlikely that I will ever become the traveler that she is. I enjoy Europe for reasons best explained over a glass of red wine in a sunny sidewalk cafe. She, on the other hand, has in recent years been to India, Japan, Africa, Costa Rica, Honduras, Alaska, Turkey etc. etc.