An impossible dream is fulfilled

It was supposed to have been a retirement party for Janet's teaching colleague held at our home with me serving as emcee and "keynote speaker." For days prior I helped Janet bring in the food, rearrange the furniture and do all that was necessary (including review the first- and second-grade curriculum for funny material) to appropriately honor a popular pedagogue (short of paying her an appropriate wage).

Anyway, 30 minutes before the first guests were to arrive (the promised "helpers" never did), my daughter-in-law Deena called urgently asking if I could drive over to the photo store before it closed to pick up baby photos for (not of) her ailing grandmother. Since the only one I jump to obey faster and better than my wife, Janet, is one of my precious daughters-in-law, I instantly abandoned my post as "party-czar" (nowadays, in America, everybody is a "czar" of some sort) and burst into the shop to retrieve what I knew would be a great-grandmother's greatest joy.

It was then and there that my entire (poo-poo) family suddenly poured from a rear room screaming, laughing, yelling, giggling, mumbling and singing "Happy Birthday."

Yup, there was Jeremy, Naomi, Sima, Chaim and Shifra direct from Baltimore, Md., and Danny, Ora, Temima, Yaakov and Gittel, also from Baltimore (apparently Baltimore is the city of choice for expatriate Goldmans) and Hillel, Deena (now forever to be known as "Devious Deena — the Entrapper of Gullible Father's-in-law") and Eliana all the way from Forest Hills, and Talia and Steven, all the way from two blocks away in Cedarhurst, as well as Janet, the mistress mind behind this birthday plot who had snuck in (among her many other sneaky moves of the day) through a back door along with my beloved mother-in-law.

Though my 60th birthday was two full weeks away and, though I had intended to celebrate my Hebrew birthday which falls on Rosh Hashana (the traditional "birth of the world" which, as I've noted before, makes me as old as the hills) with some of the family and my English birthday with other family members (thereby doubling the amount of attention, presents and cake) they had concocted this surprise (actually, shock) party so we could review the results of six decades together.