Working Birthday

“How would you like to celebrate your birthday?” son #3 asked me.

My quick reply, “By thanking God for His grace through my long years—and by treating the kids in church to dirty ice-cream [local nickname for sorbetes].”

He replied, “Okay.”

Then he added, “Why not invite the Dacs (my siblings and their families who are in the country) for an early dinner so we can work and finalize plans for the Clan Reunion.”

(We Dacs are hosting our 82nd annual Clan Reunion at the end of this old year and the beginning of the new one. It’s a job tattooed on our souls. Every nine years—there are nine siblings on my mother’s side—we toil. Every hour has to be planned to make the gathering meaningful for every attendee: from infants to octogenarians, now spanning six generations. We’re more than 400 living to date, but majority are abroad. So the meet-up each year gathers only over a hundred.  Still, the planning is a challenge because a clan covers all demographics.)

Being the eldest of the Dacs, per tradition, I should be chairman. But lethargy by wear and tear has set in, so I passed on the title to a nephew and a niece as co-chairs. Both smart, creative, and techies, they’ve actually been planning before being officially designated as leads.

Ribbing dominated the meeting, plus photo ops, masked as documentation. But our co-chair (the other was abroad at that time) got everything down pat.

Coincidentally, the theme they chose is “Pass it on.”

And oh, my dirty ice-cream birthday treat for kids went so well that even the youth, the middle-aged, and oldies crowded the sorbetero after the worship service.

Not only was it a working birthday, it was a simple celebration that worked well.