Our youngest and oldest grandsons share the same birthday, and today is that day. One is turning 14; the other is turning 3. 11 years to the day separate the brothers. Between them, there are three other grandchildren. We have a cluster of family birthdays this weekend. My nephew’s birthday was on Friday, and my wife’s birthday was yesterday. Celebrating birthdays is one of he reminders of the milestones of our life’s journey. The birthdays serve as markers not only of the passage of time but of memories of our past experiences.

Our youngest grandson has a unique place in our family. He was born just five months after we moved into this house. He has no memory of us living anywhere other than just a few miles from his home. He is used to seeing us nearly every day. He is at home in our house. When his brother was born, we lived 1240 miles away from his home. We tried to visit as often as possible, but we didn’t get many glimpses of his daily life. With our youngest, it has been very different. I feel like I know him. I have unique relationships with all my grandchildren and feel blessed by every one, but there is something extraordinary about having constant contact with him. I associate his birth with our time of living in this home. Our other grandchildren visited us while we lived in different homes. From his perspective, we’ve always lived in the blue house on Clamdigger Drive.

Our oldest grandson was born just three weeks after my mother died. I was in the early stages of processing the grief of the loss, and into my life came this fantastic new infant. One month later, Susan’s father died. Life has moved on in many ways, but celebrating his birthday always reminds me of our turbulent year in 2011. In 15 months, my brother died, my mother died, our grandson was born, my father-in-law died, and our daughter was married. It was an incredible emotional roller coaster for us. The year was also a challenging one in my career. We had agreed to take a sabbatical leave differently than planned to create space in the church budget for a part-time pastor being called to our church staff.

Our nephew was the first grandson on both sides of his family. I had several nieces and nephews born to my siblings, but this was the first for Susan’s family. His entrance marked the beginning of a new generation. A few years later, we had a son, and then more grandchildren were born until my in-laws had five - the same number as we now have.

My wife’s birthday has been a significant celebration in my life for more than half a century. Yesterday was the 52nd time we celebrated it as husband and wife. We’ve celebrated in several places with several different events and activities. There have been a lot of cakes, a few practical gifts, and some that were less memorable. In addition to celebrating what an incredible gift she has been to me, each year’s celebration is an occasion for me to recognize my deep gratitude for her parents and sisters. Like our grandson and nephew, she was the family's first grandchild, the pioneer of a new generation.

In 2019, she experienced a serious illness, and there was a brief time when I was unsure whether or not she would survive. As a result of that experience, every birthday since has seemed like a bonus to me. I’ve gone from sitting at her bedside praying for just one more day and one more conversation to celebrating five birthdays. Every day is an extravagant gift for me. Those days have added up into weeks and months and years. I have been blessed beyond measure.

We have family birthdays in March, April, June, July, and September, and each is an opportunity to celebrate our love. February, however, is unique in its blast of birthdays. I had cake and ice cream with dinner last night, and the prospects are good for more celebration foods today.

Technically, the English language has 12 verb tenses. We tend to think of the three categories of these tenses more than about the different nuances. Past, Present, and Future cover the span of time. Although we use verb aspects of simple, continuous, and perfect, we often are unaware of their distinctions. I am a writer and rarely distinguish between past simple and past perfect continuous. However, the ways we talk and think about time in our language are not the only ways to think and speak. In Biblical Hebrew, there are only two primary tenses. Some events have ended, and some have been ongoing. The present is usually a part of the ongoing tense, but there are moments when it is attached to the past tense, such as the moment of a death or another significant ending. It can be confusing for translators to express the same understanding of time from one language to the other.

Albert Einstein taught the world that time is relative. Time passes more slowly for an object moving faster than another object. The physicist Carlo Rovelli theorized that humans can only perceive the past and future. Our experience of the present is always perceived as part of the past or part of the future. As a non-physicist, his concepts are very similar to the tenses in Biblical Hebrew. Rovelli hints that time might not be a one-way street always going in the same direction.

I don’t understand all physicists' theories, but I know how my memory allows me to journey back into my past. Events that have already occurred continue to be meaningful to me. Birthdays are an opportunity for me to use the Present Perfect Continuous tense. Some actions started in the past and are still ongoing.

As I age, I find joy in recalling significant moments and events. The celebration of birthdays doesn’t carry the same intense excitement as it did when I was younger, but there is a sweetness I didn’t recognize before I grew older.