Some cancelled plans hurt more than others. In these five months of sheltering, we’ve all missed weddings, graduations, and important milestones. My wife and I were meant to spend the first week of August with close friends on Fire Island, and to join her parents for a stretch of sailing on the Atlantic coast, before celebrating our anniversary in New Paltz, where we were married thirteen years ago. I’ll let all of that go, and we’ll pencil these plans in for next August, but I’d give almost anything to be in New York this Sunday for my father’s eightieth birthday.

A Virgo from the ‘Silent Generation,’ my father, James Cyril Davis, Jr., grew up in Woodmere, Long Island, riding horses, playing basketball, fishing and swimming in the Poconos, and helping his father install and repair boilers in the basements of the five towns of Nassau County. The eldest of five children, Jimmy was the first to go to university, studying English at Harpur College, in Binghamton, New York, where he met my mother, Jody Greenfield. After grad school in Rochester, my father became an English professor at Monroe Community College, and they bought an old farmhouse in Farmington, where my brother and I grew up, and where my parents are now.

My father taught at MCC for twenty-eight years, and I remember my delight when he would bring me to work and I would play with microfiche in the library, and eat lunch in the college cafeteria. I have so many fond memories of time spent with my father – playing basketball, splitting firewood, canoeing on the Finger Lakes - that it’s difficult to come up with one that represents how much he means to me, but there was a time, after my father retired, when he came to work with me. It was a short shift for him, but every year on Christmas Eve, at the wine shop where Daniel and I met in Brooklyn, my father would come help me close up the store, and then we’d drive together to Julia’s parents’ house in New Paltz.

In that final hour of holiday sales, my father would hold the door for last minute shoppers, and chat them up as they browsed. He was so proud to see me in my element, and so pleased and comfortable, really mirthful, interacting with customers. Then we’d lock up the shop, get in the car, and drive north, often through ice and snow. We’d then enjoy the rare pleasure of talking alone together for an hour or so, before calling from the thruway exit to telegraph our arrival, and finally arriving the cozy home full of loved ones, with Julia’s steaming bouillabaisse just hitting the table.

We can’t always be where we want to be when we want to be there these days, but it helps to sit and remember some of the good times. Happy birthday Dad! I love you, and am thinking of you, and we’ll see you next year. Eighty-one’s a big one too.

Much love,

Jonathan