Re-Gifting

It’s only mid-morning, and I’m already hopelessly behind on thanking wonderful friends for your birthday greetings. Whoever is reading this and smiling to themselves, I feel your heart and I truly appreciate you touching in. Thank you for being part of my life which, given my bumptious lack of judgment and planning, has already been extended beyond all reason.

It’s been a pretty good one so far. Started off making coffee for my sweetie and feeding the dog, because an aging man needs to keep his dear ones close (and so do you younger guys; don’t miss this memo). At zero-dark-hundred my son showed up, and we took off for his medical appointment — these things are never good on your own. Best to walk side by side, as long as those options remain open to us.

Midway through the flurry of tiny, predawn chores, I realized I’d run out of blood thinners. The VA ships them to me. Prescriptions used to be shipped with plenty of calendar overlap to ensure veterans wouldn’t run out of necessary meds, but that policy shifted this year. Now they ship them only when you’re about to be out.

So I took a gap-filling baby aspirin before we left (stopped taking these when I went on the blood thinners, but one does as one can), and called the VA Pharmacy while I waited for <Son> to finish his appointment. I thanked the the nice pharmacist when she verified my birth date and wished me a happy birthday. Then I asked her if my meds were in the mail.

No. I don’t share a birthday with the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., but I often mostly share one with his federal holiday. This year, that didn’t matter.

What did matter was that my prescription order — held until January 17, three days ago — got snarled up. It’s still in “pre-shipping.” Perhaps, it was tentatively suggested, I could go “present myself” at the pharmacy window, and beg.

She warmly assured me that she would leave a note.

I am reasonably certain that I have some aspect of Pres. Trump’s administration to thank for VA’s new, leaner policy of holding prescriptions until the last moment: an executive order, DOGE teenagers, or just some craven stooge installed to help break the Veterans Administration.

Either way, my doctors have been firm about the need to keep taking Eloquis. So forgive me not responding timely and personally to all the lovely birthday greetings, but in a few minutes I’ll be idling through the traffic snarl of a busted freeway, glacially nosing my way to the Seattle VA Hospital to inquire about keeping my veins open. Legs wrapped, glasses wiped, overshades mounted, and hearing aid inserted, I’m strapped and ready for this adventure!

Should take five hours or less.

There won’t be a whole lot of birthday left after that, but I’d still like to use it for honorable purposes. It’s a bit of an off-year, 62, but also another jewel in the crown of this unexpected bonus round: a gift, but also one that I earned.

I can do what I want with it.

Given that, I’m awarding this year’s birthday to Pres. Donald J. Trump, Nobel almost-Laureate, because even though he already has more birthdays than I (and quite possibly more than I’ll ever have), the Trumpster can never quite get enough of anything — particularly other people’s things; things that he hasn’t earned, that he can simply reach out and grab like a toddler stealing a shiny rattle from an infant.

So he can have this year’s birthday, and I’ll even throw in a few spare blood clots I’m not using right now. But you, my friends? My family of blood, of choice, and of joyful happenstance?

You, I’m keeping for as long as my grasp holds out. You are stuck with me. Thanks for being unapologetically your own true selves, and for reminding others to keep their hearts true.

With apologies to the rabbis: “next year, in Greenland!”