It’s my husband’s birthday!
AT LAST! I can now talk about the fact that today, March 31, is my husband’s 80th birthday.
Why couldn’t I talk about this before?
Because a week ago we (friends, colleagues, former interns, our two sons) hosted a big surprise party for Stan (his sports column appears in the Sunday Freeman) at a favorite New York City haunt.
This project had been in the works for months. Among many other things, it meant bringing one son, who lives in Israel, over in secrecy and “stashing” him and his two oldest children at the house in Boiceville for several days, without Stan’s knowledge.
It meant flying back to New York City from Portland, Ore., – older son, daughter-in-law and two grandkids on the same flight – then spending a night in a hotel. It was beyond strange to stay in a Manhattan hotel about 32 blocks from my own apartment!
THE top-secret project also involved finding dozens of old friends whose numbers I didn’t have, while interns tried their best to cadge phone numbers out of my husband’s office and off his cell phone.
Everybody kept saying to me, “Oh, piece of cake; you’ll just Google, Facebook or Twitter them.”
Yeah, right. Try Googling, Facebooking or Twittering 80-year-old former Public School 164 classmates. Most of them think “Googling” is making a Harpo Marx face; “Facebook” means meeting your bookie in person; “Twitter,” of course, is what birds or flighty women do!
After telephone Information told me the 12th person no longer existed, I exploded.
“Siri” on my cell phone was no better; “she” kept serving up businesses or places, but no Jimmy Hernon or Lew Klotz!
However, without email, we could never have pulled it off. By the time we took off for New York, I was keeping track of about 50 people – when they should come (any time during the assigned hours), if they should bring gifts (absolutely not, but, naturally, many did anyway), and if they’d please RSVP via email (lots did; some funny, some sweet).
ALL the while, my sons and daughters-inlaw worried about the costs, and about whether they could arrange time off (thank heaven it was grandchildren’s spring break), and about whether the shock would be too great, and about whether he would hate a surprise, etc.
I just worried that many of the prospective attendees were going to be calling, emailing or
seeing Stan. I knew somebody was going to blow it. Thus, after all this work, it would end up being a massive fizzle.
Then, on the appointed day, we arrived at the restaurant the ordained halfhour early, only to find a score of guests already there and the assigned room chock full of another event!
I figured that was it: While 70 or 80 of our guests milled about, and 50 or 60 people from the earlier party straggled through our mob, Stan would walk in and all would be chaos and mayhem!
BUT it worked; it all worked. The former intern tasked with bringing Stan over on a pretext dilly-dallied around (always his forte!) just long enough for the restaurant to get the previous party out, set up the room for our group (barely) and get us all crammed in so that Stan wouldn’t suspect.
When Stan arrived and everybody yelled, “Surprise!” the look on his face was absolutely priceless. For a moment I thought to myself, “Omigod, they were all right; he’s about to have a stroke!”
Then Stan spotted Simon, the son from Israel, and that was it. He broke down totally, and took us all with him. It was a moment that made all the work, all the fears – everything – worth it.
After all, when a man turns 80 years young (has written over 100 books, been a journalist for over a half-century, just signed a contract extension to continue on TV, raised two wonderful sons, has five of the most beautiful grandchildren and still rides his venerable bike to Madison Square Garden), doesn’t he deserve a few good laughs, some great company, good food and a quiet sob or two?
I thought so.