Two Birthdays

Once more I reach the time of year when there are many birthdays to celebrate in the Higgins clan. While there are birthdays aplenty in the earlier part of the year, it is as summer comes into full bloom that my children and siblings find these anniversaries of their birth beginning to occur. (This is something that I can only assume can be accounted for by long cold Midwestern winters, long before global warming reared it ugly head.) 

So June begins this period today with the birth of my oldest Sean Patrick, who gained his name from Sean Connery, an actor that his mother and I were rather fond of at the time (especially when you ignore the Bond movies) and the Patron saint of Ireland. He has fulfilled the promise of this name with a fine career and an admirable life. I will not embarrass him with a list of his accomplishments in the field of computers (which I don't really understand anyway), nor by heaping praise upon him; but I will simply say that no father has ever been more proud of his son, and I am happy to have a venue like this blog to be able to publicly say so. 

But two days hence there is reason to celebrate yet again in the family, as my younger sister Kathy becomes the same age as I am. How can this be you might ask, if she is your younger sister? The fact is that Kathy and I are "Irish Twins", siblings born but 10-1/2 months apart. One can only speculate as to the excitement that our parents felt when this given this announcement by the gynecologist during my mother's postpartum check up. Kathy and I grew up inseparable however, excepting of course when my mother was forced to separate us to at least temporarily prevent one of us from tormenting the other to the point of madness (perhaps that's how I got this way). Now a grandmother herself and visiting her 1st grandchild in Germany as this is posted, we remain very close. 

So I happily take this time away from the more mundane affairs of world in general and politics in particular to wish both of them a truly Happy Birthday.