As my birthday on August 31 approaches I become melancholy. Today while driving our brand new Chevrolet Cruze I told Rosemary, “I have no idea how many years we had our Malibu (which gave up the ghost on December 23 2016) but if we keep this car for five years I will be 80. Will I be driving at that age if I am alive?” Rosemary chose to remain silent.

Every approaching birthday always take me back to the first ones that I remember in my Buenos Aires. We lived in a house with a very long but narrow garden. My mother would draw a donkey (to put the tail on it) and hang a piñata. My uncle Tony would come to take the photograph (which is one of the few instances where I can see my father in a photograph). Sometimes my birthday party (and I have hated cake since then) had to be postponed. August 30 is the anniversary of Santa Rosa de Lima. On her day or near it there was usually a terrific storm called “La Tormenta de Santa Rosa”

Alex - top; fifth from left with cone hat

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All those smiling children in the photographs are now gone, dead or disappeared. My birthday no longer has that relevance.

In Vancouver August 31 brings the winds of fall and our garden goes into a slow decline. The roses are far and in between.

But there is beauty in the garden in the realization that all things die but that they, and us, have a will to keep on while they and we can.

My father at top, Alex centre bottom with the smirk