At 80-something, birthdays are a gift, if you are lucky enough to still have them. 

I had no expectations about my earlier-this-week birthday but it was lovely, including phone calls, texts, flowers, my class, a walk, and a total of 12,226 steps.

On birthdays, one tends to think of past birthdays—and some really are memorable, like my 13^th, when I had six girls AND six boys for a dinner of my mother’s great spaghetti and an evening of bowling.  I got a birthday greeting this time from one attendee of that party. 

Would the others attend a party for me now? 

No idea.