Birthday keepsake

On the occasion of my son's 20th birthday, we got to reminiscing about birthday parties when he was little. The ones he remembered most fondly? You guessed it. The ones that barely cost a dime: one when he was 4, where the kids played in chalk on the driveway; the softball party at a local ball field where one cousin pitched, and another umped; the party at a friend's airplane hanger where they got to sit in the cockpit of his small plane. OK, the very best party was the one, when he was older, at Fenway. Did you know you can get tours of the park when it's empty? Yeah, that one wasn't free.

So aside from the Bar Mitzvah party (and yes, he does remember that one!), why does it come as no surprise that the party that probably cost the most, he doesn't remember at all? That's gotta be because there were so many parties at Chuck E Cheese, they all blur together.

So maybe I was just primed for what arrived in the mail at the office this week -- "Your Birthday Book, A Keepsake Journal" by Amy Krouse Rosenthal (or maybe I'm just a sentimental sucker?). Either way, I love the idea of writing about each birthday, gathering a few photos, and then having it, years later, to look back on. What fun that would have been last week!