Reflections on my 56th year

Yesterday was my birthday, so I think I'll take this opportunity to reflect a little on my 56th year, the one I just completed.

It was generally a pretty good year. I enjoyed my teaching and my students, and we got to take several interesting little trips around the North here. We made some new friends, and we got closer to some ones we had only known a little before.

Last winter, David was in the hospital at Rambam Medical Center, in Haifa, and that was probably the closest I have come to losing him in the 13 years that we've been together. We had even gotten to the point of beginning to say "good-bye" to each other. But, thank goodness, he is doing SO much better now!

Towards the end of the year, I realized something interesting that I'm glad I did NOT think about last winter. Both my father AND my mother lost a spouse during the year that they were 55. My dad was 55 at the time that his first wife, Mary, was killed in the tragic car accident (some of you may remember my grandfather's account of that, which I posted here a while back). Nearly 23 years later (when I was 20 years old), my father himself died. He was 78, but my mom was 55. So, I'm glad that history did NOT repeat itself for me during this past year!