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.