Birthday, July 10, 2022

Okay. 69. My grandfather R. F. Laird made it to 82 with a radiation hole in his back. My father R. F. Laird made it to 77 with a cancer he had tried to prevent by quitting smoking at 40. I’m not likely to get to 77. As somebody said, it’s not the years, it’s the mileage. R. F. Laird III, in the end, dies of hubris, drink, and unfinished books.

But I have had an hellacious Odyssey. I was raised to be a snob, utterly above even the wealthy wannabes. Beat it somehow, mostly by giving into it and then recoiling from it. Called having your cake and eating it too. I was a Harvard final club president at 17 years old. Nearly killed myself breaking and entering all but two of the other final clubs. Hell on wheels.

Then flopping back to Jersey motorhead. Hundred miles an hour, hundred-twenty miles an hour, hundred-thirty miles an hour, plus 60 mph in a 135 hp Whaler at the shore. Hell on the water..

Zipping back up to elitist, became an international management consultant.y Paris, Milan, Zurich, Frankfurt, Wiesbaden, A-u-t-o-b-a-h-n. Multinational hell on wheels.


I had cars, clothes, and stuff to die for, including a family manse. Gone, gone now. Lost to divorce and disaster. (Should I give you pictures? Think not.) What do I do now? Nothing. I write. I write. And I watch TV, just to see how far we have fallen.

Which is aaalllllll the way down to zero.

Happy Birthday, R. F. Laird. Last of the breed. Impervious to every charge you can think of. I do not suffer from guilt. I got here by an abundance of fidelity. Enough said.

But, and here’s the thing, she sang to me, or her sylph stand-in did. In Menton, France, summer of ‘63. I was 10. She kissed me. What can you put up against that? (It was my dad who put her onto me. Thank you, Dad.) Her name was Edith Sanski. She was prettier than Piaf. 

My birthday. My rules. Thinking of my dad tonight. See where he still lives in the Comment on this post.


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