It was one of those moments where nothing more needed to be said. We had just finished a movie and were walking to the Skip’s car. The wind was brutal, the temperature was well below freezing, and the night was dismal. Hurrying inside, I pulled my coat tighter around me as Skip started the car.
“I hate going to the movies in winter,” he said with a note of sadness in his voice. “It’s so much better in the summer.”
There was no better way to convey the discontent near the end of winter in upstate New York. It was why we had spent the earlier part of the evening plotting and planning possible weekends for our annual Boston Red Sox adventure, picturing a warmer world on the brink of summer again.
There’s nothing better than planning future adventures with an old friend. Suddenly it struck me, in the wretched cold and dark of a February night: we were old friends. We’d known each other for almost a decade and a half. (That’s the thing about old friends: they take years to find.) Now, at the end of an evening, with no need for inane filler babble, we coasted to the last weeks of winter, sustaining ourselves through the dark season with whiskey and beer and the odd appetizer. (Still no new decaffeinated soda selections at the concession stand. And why is it called a concession stand anyway? What are we conceding? Our health? Things that make you go to a movie expert like Skip…)
Last year he turned 40, and that fun party was the unofficial kick-off to spring. Coming as it does one week before the real deal, Skip’s birthday has become the earliest signs that winter is receding, that the world will be bright and sunny again, that there is hope left after all. That’s sort of symbolic of what Skip is to many of us ~ an eternal font of hope and optimism. He’s a perpetual example of how the planning and plotting and dreaming is as much a part of the journey as the destination ~ and sometimes not getting where you originally thought you wanted to be can be the best move we never make.
Happy Birthday Skip ~ and many happy returns of the day!
