Today is my Irving's birthday. He's finally 'caught up' with me. I'm just a tad more than a month older than him, but I don't pull rank. When we were young, he lied to me, told me he was 15 and he wasn't yet 14. On his birthday I spoke with his mother when she answered the telephone in a call I made to him, and she responded to something I said about his birthday by telling me no, not at all, this was his 14th birthday. 

When we were young in the 1950s, children used to 'date' at a younger age. Mostly belonging to groups  that would meet at parochial community centers that would hold dances on weekend evenings. I actually met him when a mutual friend invited him to a birthday party. My 14th birthday party, in fact, at my parents' house. When I saw him I 'recognized' him immediately; he was the boy I had always dreamed of.

It took little time before he began coming around regularly, and we'd go out for long walks to area parks, through the streets around the community, to the public library. And to the community centre dances where we'd meet up with our friends. He went to Oakwood Collegiate Institute and played on their football team while I was at the High School of Commerce and he was in a grade above me, despite his age.

Neither his family nor mine saw any need for us to continue formal schooling. Both figured that high school prepared us for a working life. We had both worked in factories during summer holidays. The summer I was informed I wouldn't be returning to school for grade 11 left me speechless. I found work in a typing pool, while he continued school for another two years. 

Now, seventy years later, we've grown old together. And a lot of life has been lived side-by-side in the process. Sometimes we wonder at the swiftness of the passage of the years. And sometimes we think back to all the times we've shared, not the least of which was raising three children who are now themselves beginning to enter their 'elder' years.

So we're both now 84 years old, and life holds us together in its gentle grasp. When we were 17 we wanted to be together forever, and thought of eloping, though it's doubtful we would have known how to proceed toward legal marriage. Finally, we informed our parents and they 'persuaded' us to wait. They gave their permission for us to be come 'engaged', and plans went forward for a June wedding when we attained age 18.

Today is Irving's birthday, a day no different than any other we've had together. A little merrier, perhaps, quips coming more readily, along with the hugs. As far as our two puppies are concerned it's a day like any other, a day that promises they'll have the pleasure of a long hike through forest trails on a perfect winter day of mild temperatures, no wind, and full sun in a  wide blue sky.

We were amenable; when they invited us out for a  tramp through the ravine, we agreed, and we set off a bit earlier in the afternoon than we generally do. Nothing quite serves the function of relaxation and leisure pleasure as does a stroll through a forest, observing the changing landscape where in some areas conifers predominate, and others host more deciduous trees. Where acquired snow through a number of snowstorms hump the landscape with a thick coverlet of gleaming white.

And where scintillating rays of the sky-mounting sun flash through the forest canopy illuminating the tree tops and shooting through gaps between trees to reach the forest floor where an exchange between the frozen surface and the warmth-filled rays reach a compromise; briefly kissing, neither assuming pressure on the other. A little like marriage.

Oops! How is it possible? Symbolic of not the years that have passed necessarily, but the years that have brought us to our mid-80s? Another two months and I'll hit 84. My memory is secure as are my thought processes. Or so I felt. Last night, speaking to our younger son, I had one of those 'oh, no!' moments, when I said to him, 'you're kidding...?'

That was when he said his older brother is turning 61 in several weeks' time, not 60 as we'd assumed. Why did we assume? Hmmm, memory. As for our younger son, he'll be 58 in several days when his birth date arrives, and his sister falls right in between. How is it possible for parents to forget how old their children are? Mind, we do have problems keeping track of our own birthdays. But we think we've got it down right, now.

Birthdays, fleeting time. Disbelief. That's life.

So it taking care that we don't miss daily appointments with destiny. We are destined to emerge from our comfortable home daily to take two little dogs for a walk. Two little dogs we were convinced were reaching their 5th year. Then to discover they're really six years old now, having consulted their papers. Something about age that doesn't quite sit right with us?

Today's another of those in-between fall days. We've been treated to sun, cool temperatures and plenty of wind. We'd gone out early this morning, leaving two little dogs on their desperate own. The piteous groans and whining, the cries for rescue from the horrible thought of being left alone for an hour, deserted, orphaned, the world coming to an abrupt end.

And then, on our return, leaping with relief at us that nothing horrible occurred to take us away from them forever. Leaving them alone in a suddenly-cold, alienated environment. Gone, their source of food, a tragedy upon a disaster. Oh, the joy when two little snouts searched anxiously through the groceries for signs of a cauliflower or two and discovering their presence. Reward time!

In the ravine soon after breakfast, the wind howled through the forest canopy, swaying treetops, flicking dried foliage off the only home they've known since their spring birth. Even leaves want the security of comfort and shelter, and now their trees have abandoned them. True, they've been dressed in lovely costumes for the occasion, but there they are, adrift on an ocean of other discarded leaves, left to their own devices, to wither and shrivel and become compost for the forest rebirth cycle.

We saw a tiny  apple that had fallen into the crotch of a very old wild apple tree. So, discarded, it failed to venture very far from its home berth. And the woodland fall asters despite the cold are holding their own, dominating the forest floor with their undistinguished floral presence. The larger, more attractive asters have suffered a setback on the other hand, with pounding rain of the past several days serving to give them an entirely dishevelled look from which they may never recover; they haven't the rebound qualities of their scruffier counterparts.

We passed a huge old pine at the bottom of one of the hills, with its massive three leaders. Hammered on to one of those leaders at some time in the wistfully dim past area children -- when the area was still farmland adjoining the ravine -- were two small boards, to enable them to find foot- and hand-holds to ease their way onto the upper branches of a then-immature tree. The pine has over the years grown to an enormous size and taken those two boards up with them and they sit now at a lofty height that even the nimblest of sturdy youngsters could not reach.

Our daily trek over, we returned home, ambled down the street out of the forest environs, to begin another part of our day, Jackie and Jillie satisfied that they enjoyed another day's ramble in the woods. I've planned a hearty lentil-tomato soup for dinner, to be paired with a spicy-cheesy flatbread I'll try out for the first time with bread dough I've prepared, and my husband has gone out to mow the lawn....