30

“When I sneeze, I have to move my Adam’s apple back in to place.”

That’s basically how my 30th birthday started, with El Oso rubbing his throat on the way out the door.

It was Puck’s last day at school before Christmas break. And when I picked him up at the early 11:30 dismissal: chaos.

“MOM! MOM! MOM!”

Puck came flying down the hall as I signed in his carpool number. I don’t know if he actually had anything in particular he wanted to tell me. But he did remember the addendum.

“I HAD SO MUCH CANDY!”

After I sent him back to the classroom, where kids were already pouring into the hallways with sacks of candy, I took up residence at my usual waiting wall with a book.

When Puck was safely stashed in the car, I mentioned we would have lunch “at Grandma’s”.

“It’s okay, Mom. I already had so much sugar, I don’t want any lunch.”

At the Big House – Dad, Mom, Carrie-Bri, and Francis greeted me with a round of maybe three different versions of “Happy Birthday” before opening the birthday donuts.

Then Francis took a grumpy Puck with him to pick up a load of firewood in the truck. Grumpy, because he didn’t want to go on the ride.

Some time later, a much changed attitude returned, bursting through the patio door.

“LOOK AT ALL THE COOL STUFF I GOT!”

Apparently the man who sold firewood also worked at a rock shop. The stash he sent home with Puck was full of curiosities: broken arrowhead, ancient deer jawbone, quartz, petrified wood, and a fossilized bone that Rose and I later decided was likely either a Native American tent peg or tool of some kind.

The evening ended with burgers at home, and then a handful of the kids lounging in the basement to watch Colin Firth in “Magic in the Moonlight” and two boxes of dilly bars in mint and Heath. The Peanut Gallery was in full action, of course.

“I know what’s coming next,” Francis said importantly. “A romantic scene.”

“They’re gonna make out,” Joe agreed.

“Of course they are. What else would they do in an observatory?”

And that’s how I turned 30.