Birthday Card

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My son and I share a birthday, today, and every year my mother sends us each a Hallmark card.

Getting the card is a reliable thing in an unreliable world. Mom never forgets.

About a decade ago, my son opened his card to find a crisp $20 bill.

He was seven at the time and he turned to me with Great Expectations. He wanted to see what my envelope contained. I could see the wheels turning.

It was clear he was thinking that if a child gets $20, the payoff for an adult must be unimaginably enormous.

I knew even before I opened the card that there would be no crisp Benjamin tucked inside. It would be weird to send me cash. Adults don’t do that.

It’s curious that at some not-clearly defined point we age out of so many things. You stop doing sleepovers, you no longer search for Easter Eggs, and you don’t send your adult children cash.

I opened the card and there was a lovely message from my parents.

“What’s inside?” my son asked. “How much money?”

I broke the news that adults don’t get money on their birthdays.

“That’s a rip off!” my son exclaimed.

I told my mom later, and we had a good laugh about how “kids will be kids.”

I reassured her that I appreciated the card and that I hadn’t expected money.

I told her that she and Adam Turkewitz are among the few I can count on to send me a card every year. (Adam is a mortgage banker who robo messages me for my birthday and every other holiday.)

My mother sends a birthday card to all her children, grandchildren and some assorted other friends. It’s a lot to keep track of and well above the number for the average American (seven, according to Hallmark.)

A year later, my son and I got the usual letters in the mail.

My son was delighted to find another brand new $20.

I opened my card and was surprised to find a check.

Mom said she didn’t want to disappoint anyone.

She never does.

(Part of a series of life lessons based on conversations with my parents.)

BRIEF OBSERVATIONS

SPRING IS HERE: The birds and bird watchers of Central Park are excited for Spring.

NAVAL: Naval Ravikant dropped this nugget on his new app Airchat. One marvelous thing about our age is that there are so many original ideas and thoughts it’s hard even to keep up.

GETTING A JOB: In 2022, Bill Gates shared with the Internet his first resume. He joked that “whether you are a recent grad or a college dropout, I’m sure your resume looked better than mine 48 years ago.”

PUSHKIN: Fabulous detail about how the Russian poet visualized his characters.

RINGO STARR: For years a group of kids told their friends that Ringo Starr took their photo. No one believed it until many years later when Ringo published an album of his photography and there it was.