Yesterday I officially joined the ranks of the old: for the first time in my life I am now on daily medication--a very low-dose blood pressure pill. I'm actually feeling pretty good about it, in a resigned sort of way. I've had some weird evanescent symptoms for a while, which the nurse practitioner believes are related to the blood pressure spikes. Apparently women in particular can be sensitive to such shifts. In the old days I used to have low blood pressure. I don't know why this has changed. T and I have the same diet, and his blood pressure is fine. I exercise regularly and don't have a significant weight problem. But bodies are strange things, and mine has decided to go a little haywire. I'm glad the problem is so easy to solve.

Today is Tom's 61st birthday, and we are having a play day. Later this morning we'll walk to Norimoto--a James Beard Award-winning Japanese-influenced bakery that happens to be up the street--and buy a few little treats for breakfast. This afternoon we'll drive over to West-Port Lanes and go bowling. And this evening we'll eat dinner downtown at the Wayside Tavern.

Tom and I met when we were 19. We've been a pair since we were 21. We got married at 26. We lived in the woods together for more than 20 years. We raised two babies into men. The Dawn and Tom Show has been running for a long, long time. How can I sing his praises? He is full of contradiction: thorny yet easygoing, ironic yet sweet, shy yet sociable; a domesticated loner: reliable, handy, and mysterious; an artist, an intellectual, a carpenter, a comic, a fierce opponent at card games, a cuddler of kittens; a guy who is willing to lie on his stomach in a puddle of water and peer into the bowels of a broken washing machine; a guy who leans his shoulder into mine at the movies, whose face lights up when he sees me across a room, because mine lights up when I see his. He is my good fortune.

It also happens to be the birthday of Hannah, our daughter-in-law-to-be: another stroke of luck. What a delight to have her in our lives--this funny, dear, smart, charming young woman who thinks our son is the cat's meow, and he thinks she is the cat's meow, and may they someday celebrate her 61st birthday together as gratefully as I'm celebrating Tom's today.