Today is my step father’s birthday.

If he were still alive, and we still lived close to each other, we would have gone out to dinner and then back to my mom’s house for apple pie and ice cream.

A simple desert for a simple man.

I thought about getting pie and ice cream, lighting a candle, making a wish for him. I thought about marking this day with fanfare, making a fuss, but it didn’t feel warranted, it didn’t feel necessary.

The reason is as simple as the man himself…..to my stepfather, Glen, every single day was to be, and was, celebrated.

Glen was born and raised in a small mining town in West Virginia. Times were hard. Very hard yet in every old photo I have come across, it is easy to pick him out. He is the one with the head of thick curls; the one who is always, always, always smiling.

Not the forced smile children have in posed photos; all teeth and cheeks stretched beyond their natural limits. No. His smile was always quick and easy and genuine and natural.

In his childhood pictures, his eyes are always squinted, his smile almost a laugh. A big, hearty belly laugh. It is a smile he never grew out of. It is a smile he was quick to share.

He was a brilliant man, yet I call him simple. I mean that as a compliment. He understood the complexities of life, yet knew in the end, it was all really very simple.

Live life.

Really live it. Bite into it, taste it, savor it all. Even, and most importantly, the simple things.

As he moved on and up from his humble beginnings, he never lost sight of who he was, or how superficial the trappings of “success” were. If he had something and you needed it, wanted it, even looked at it, it was yours.
He had no need for “things.”

He had a smile. A mischievous smile with a gleam in his eye. The kind of smile people have when they know a secret. He had this smile from the first pictures I have come across to the last time I saw him before he was hospitalized.

It was a smile he would share with anyone and everyone. He shared the secret too, but I was too young, too frazzled, too in a hurry to understand it then.

He shared it while we sat in matching easy chairs in the living room, rocking for the sake of rocking, not saying a word. He shared it on the back porch swing as he ate an apple, tossed aside the core, pointed out a circling hawk, admired the sunset, closed his eyes, took in the scent of the desert, declared rain was coming.

Today is my stepfather’s birthday.

It passed without much of a fuss.
It passed without much attention being drawn to it.
It passed being no more special than yesterday, no more important than tomorrow.
It passed being celebrated as much as any other day, enjoying a glass of wine, a good conversation, a sunset from the front porch.

It passed as magnificently and simply as all days pass.
It passed quietly with the scent of jasmine and rain on the horizon.