Mom's 70th Birthday

I cannot explain in a way that would do justice to the influence my Mother has had on my life. I will say it was great to see her so happy. The best I can do is to share my toast from the party -

Mom’s 70th Birthday-

Thanks all around for the level of sneakiness displayed by everyone, I do believe Mom was close to preparing Birthday Soup. It was hard to settle on a toast. Should it be serious? Poignant? Humorous?

I settled on borrowing two and modifying a third:

So, Humorous - Irish:

May you live to one hundred years
With one extra to repent!

Poignant:

Here’s a health to the future
A sigh for the past
We can love and remember,
And hope to the last,
And for all the base lies
That the almanacs hold,
While there’s love in the heart,
We can never grow old.

I will preface the “serious” with the comment that Mom and I have had several long discussions regarding community and family and what it means to be a part of both. So, borrowing from one of Mom’s greatest gifts to me, James Allen’s “As A Man Thinketh” I offer this thought:

“Those who cherish a beautiful vision, a lofty ideal in their hearts, will one day realize it. Columbus cherished a vision of another world, and he discovered it. Copernicus fostered the vision of a multiplicity of worlds and a wider universe, and he revealed it. Buddha beheld the vision of a spiritual world of stainless beauty and perfect peace, and he entered into it.

Cherish your visions. Cherish your ideals. Cherish the music that stirs in your heart, the beauty that forms in your mind, the loveliness that drapes your purest thoughts, for out of them will grow all delightful conditions, all heavenly environment; of these, if you but remain true to them, your world will at last be built.”

This is what you have lived and this is what you have taught.

With all my love, Happy Birthday Mom,

Bo

Link to the photo album of the party.