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Carol Ann, this is a public online cyberspaced weblog birthday greeting from your brother, all the way from Salem, Oregon to Castries, St. Lucia. In other words, like always I forgot to mail a card so it could get there in time, so I have to say "happy birthday" electronically. Well, at least this is a refreshing change from email, or those "Blue Mountain" sorts of cyber-greeting cards.
Hey, I went to some trouble to find an old photo of us, scan it, and touch it up. I love how you are looking so adoringly at your brother. Of course, that also could be a look that says, "I'd be having a much better time on this trip if that little jerk brother of mine wasn't along." Your bobby sox are so '50s. And the shorts... Actually, they're just about the length you see on the cool street kids these days, except they needed to be about six sizes larger. I, on the other hand, have got down that poised left-thumb-hooked-in-the-corner-of-your-pocket look, and the cocked-head "what, me worry?" expression (I was a huge Mad magazine fan at that time, so this phrase naturally comes to mind). My quasi-shaved head is right in modern fashion, but those rolled-up jeans are a bit too retro for 2003.
Uncle Connie looks dapper, as he always did. And I like how Mother is sweetly clutching her uncle's arm. If she was alive, she probably would hate to have people see her stomach look a bit, um, protruding. But it was probably the light. Or we can always cite her oft-expressed explanation: "it's the Lewis stomach." Can't do anything about heredity, that was her eminently scientific (and wrong, in this case) opinion, which she held as strongly as her many other firm opinons.
As the cliche goes, "you're as young as you feel." Hope this photo, and my birthday greetings, make you feel as young as you want to feel. A few margaritas won't hurt either. Much love from Brian, Laurel, and Serena.
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