Balmy in the red woods under clouds. Everything damp. I run through mud, calves and ankles blackened and Suzi’s blonde paws too, so I make her rinse in the brook at the end of our run. This birthday of mine keeps giving. Family dinner with Frank and kids, a cheerful, happy night of chatty togetherness, and my son, thirty now, has wrapped my present (delayed in the mail), in a big bag: it’s a framed print of the lyrics from the song I sang him to sleep by for years, tucking him in bed, or any time he was sick or in need of some comfort: Joni Mitchell, The Circle Game. My goodness, he does this, what a gift giver, finding the way to honor something I gave him and show how it mattered and still does.