I had my 72^nd birthday yesterday. That means that I am one-fifth of the way to having to change the name of this blog to 80-something.com. And if the other eight years go as fast as the past two…

Birthdays make me think of other birthdays—like the one I had in college when my friends gave me a scavenger hunt with a gift certificate for a pint of ice cream from my favorite ice cream parlor at each site. I was in seventh heaven. Or the time we were out to dinner for my birthday with our good friends Gordon and Christa. I was reading the menu when the waiter appeared to take our order. I looked up and it was our son Seth who had driven home for the weekend to surprise me. When we arrived at the restaurant, I had asked the maitre d' to take away the fifth chair because there were only four of us.

But yesterday's was a birthday I could easily forget. It started extra early when I drove Peter to the hospital to get a cataract removed. I dropped him there and rushed to work. I had an hour-long conference call I couldn't miss with people from Nigeria, Pakistan, and San Francisco—that's a lot of time zones to coordinate. I rushed back to the hospital to pick up Peter, took him home, and went back to work. Then I cooked my own birthday dinner.

Not the perfect birthday, but lots of cards and calls, and having Peter here with me—that all made it fine.

I am a lucky 72-year-old.