Happy Birthday Uncle Quotes

Instead of selling other countries weapons, we should sell them candles. Maybe then instead of singing the praises of war, they’d start singing Happy Birthday. And I don’t know anybody, not even my bully of an uncle, Uncle Sam, who wants to start a fight during that song.

They all seem infected with a vivaciousness that isn't common in our compound, and there are more smiles on their faces than I've ever seen at once. And yet as I watch them, I feel more intensely than ever the knowledge that I'm not one of them. For these moral humans, birthdays are a kind of countdown to the end, the ticking clock of a dwindling life. For me, birthdays are notches on an infinite timeline. Will I grow tired of parties one day? Will my birthday become meaningless? I imagine myself centuries from now, maybe at my three-hundredth birthday, looking all the way back to my seventeenth. How will I possibly be happy, remembering the light in my mother's eyes? The swiftness of Uncle Antonio's steps as he dances? The way my father stands on edge of the courtyard, smiling in that vague, absent way of his? The scene shifts and blues in my imagination. As if brushed away by some invisible broom, these people whom I've known my entire life disappear. The courtyard is empty, bare, covered in decaying leaves. I imagine Little Cam deserted, with everyone dead and gone and only me left in the shadows. Forever.

I believe in always going to the funeral. My father taught me to do that....'Always go to the funeral' means that I have to do the right thing when I really, really don't feel like it. I have to remind myself of it when I could make some small gesture, but I don't really have to and I definitely don't want to. I'm talking about those things that represent only inconvenience to me, but the world to the other guy. You know, the painfully underattended birthday party. The hospital visit during happy hour. The shiva call for one of my ex's uncles. In my humdrum life, the daily battle hasn't been good versus evil. It's hardly so epic. Most days, my real battle is doing good versus doing nothing. In going to funerals, I've come to believe that while I wait to make a grand heroic gesture, I should just stick to the small inconveniences that let me share in life's inevitable, occasional calamity. On a cold April night three years ago, my father died...His funeral was on a Wednesday, the middle of the workweek. I had been numb for days when, for some reason, during the funeral, I turned and looked back at the folks in the church. The memory of it still takes my breath away. The most human, powerful, and humbling thing I've ever seen was a church at 3:00 on a Wednesday full of inconvenienced people who believe in going to the funeral.

Laine gathers everyone in a circle as fire emits from her fingertips. She passes that fire to the others--- little balls of flame that manifest in their hands. I don't feel insulted that I'm not gifted with a little piece of her. My magic is too weak in this realm to control the flames he shares with the others. Fire cupped in their hands, everyone, even Uncle, begins to sing an ode to my life, their voices pleasant despite the slightly disjointed rhythm. It makes me feel warm inside but not as warm as I feel when Laine takes a deep breath, calling upon all of her magic. Caroline and Marcella continue to sing, but much like White Robe Jeon and Uncle, I watch, stunned, as Laine's flames transform the air around her into hot ribbons of light. Those ribbons whisk upward with the air, flickering in tune to the rhythm Caroline and Marcella sing. It shines with glory, restrained yet wild, pained yet happy. And Laine is its master, calling to not only it but all those gifted with flame, to the creatures birthed from the flame itself. Dragons. Only one appears tonight, wild and true as its silver scales catch the glimmer of the moon. It doesn't look back at us, but it has sensed Laine's magic. And it lets out a raw cry that could only have reverberated through Laine to reveal hidden truths.

I wondered what it was like, to gradually lose little pieces of your mind. Maybe it wasn’t so bad if you didn’t know it was happening, if you just kind of slowly sank into oblivion. Papa had celebrated his eighty-fifth birthday in April. He’d had a long, happy turn at life and yet it was still sad to watch it slowly ebb away. Papa continued to regard me with quiet scrutiny while my uncle rocked back on his heels and waited for someone to say something. I didn’t want to stay in this house alone tonight. I really didn’t want to stay here alone with Easton. I opened my mouth to plead with my senile great-grandfather to stay and keep me company. He spoke before I did though. “You’re no fun,” he said in a plaintive, childish voice. “Hear that, Claud?” Rocco teased. “You’re no fun.” “Shut up.” He sighed and turned serious. “I’m just trying to look out for you. I don’t think you should hide forever.” “I was only planning on hiding until Saturday.” That was the day after Jack and Anya were scheduled to return from Atlantic City. It was the date stamped on my return plane ticket. And then I would return to Arizona and go back to hiding out on that side of the country. Rocco wasn’t done prodding me. “Why don’t you go out tonight?” “I can’t find Jack’s car keys.” Rocco crossed the room in three long strides, rattled around in the kitchen for a minute, and returned with Jack’s key ring. “Excuses, excuses,

Dear Reader, In Claudia and Crazy Peaches, we get to know Aunt Peaches better, and to see the special relationship Claudia has with her aunt. I have three aunts — Aunt Adele, Aunt Martha, and Aunt Merlena — and I have special memories of all of them. Aunt Martha is my father’s sister-in-law. She and Uncle Lyman used to give my sister and me the best presents. One Christmas, when we were very little, they gave us stockings with garters. They were meant for grown women, and we thought they were hysterical! Another year they gave my sister a red cuckoo clock, and they gave me a music box with two dancing figures under a glass dome. I still have the music box. Aunt Merlena, my mother’s sister-in-law, was my only aunt who lived nearby. And she loved arts and crafts as much as I did. We made puppets together once, she showed me how to make doll clothes, and one summer day she invited me over especially so that we could make my birthday party invitations together. Aunt Adele is my father’s sister, and we are extremely close. We talk on the phone a lot, and we share a love of sewing and needlework. We exchange patterns in the mail, we give each other sewing tips, but mostly we just enjoy talking. I’m very lucky to have three such wonderful aunts — maybe that’s where the idea for Claudia and her wonderful aunt came from. Happy reading,

Traditions are conditioned reflexes. Throughout Part 2 of this book, you will find suggestions for establishing family traditions that will trigger happy anticipation and leave lasting, cherished memories. Traditions around major holidays and minor holidays. Bedtime, bath-time, and mealtime traditions; sports and pastime traditions; birthday and anniversary traditions; charitable and educational traditions. If your family’s traditions coincide with others’ observances, such as celebrating Thanksgiving, you will still make those traditions unique to your family because of the personal nuances you add. Volunteering at the food bank on Thanksgiving morning, measuring and marking their heights on the door frame in the basement, Grandpa’s artistic carving of the turkey, and their uncle’s famous gravy are the traditions our kids salivated about when they were younger, and still do on their long plane rides home at the end of November each year. (By the way, our dog Lizzy has confirmed Pavlov’s observations; when the carving knife turns on, cue the saliva, tail wagging, and doggy squealing.) But don’t limit your family’s traditions to the big and obvious events like Thanksgiving. Weekly taco nights, family book club and movie nights, pajama walks, ice cream sundaes on Sundays, backyard football during halftime of TV games, pancakes in Mom and Dad’s bed on weekends, leaf fights in the fall, walks to the sledding hill on the season’s first snow, Chinese food on anniversaries, Indian food for big occasions, and balloons hanging from the ceiling around the breakfast table on birthday mornings. Be creative, even silly. Make a secret family noise together when you’re the only ones in the elevator. When you share a secret that “can’t leave this room,” everybody knows to reach up in the air and grab the imaginary tidbit before it can get away. Have a family comedy night or a talent show on each birthday. Make holiday cards from scratch. Celebrate major family events by writing personalized lyrics to an old song and karaoking your new composition together. There are two keys to establishing family traditions: repetition and anticipation. When you find something that brings out excitement and smiles in your kids, keep doing it. Not so often that it becomes mundane, but on a regular and predictable enough basis that it becomes an ingrained part of the family repertoire. And begin talking about the traditional event days ahead of time so by the time it finally happens, your kids are beside themselves with excitement. Anticipation can be as much fun as the tradition itself.

Goody could not shake, which Ivory Mae understood made her highly significant, to Uncle Goody at least. “Where Old Forty-One?” he would always say. Forty-One! The year of my birthday was what he called me. Here come Old Forty-One. I used to like it. I used to get so happy. It paid to be his

Well, Happy Birthday to me! Was it 13 January? Honestly, I had no idea. Time flies when you're sleeping under bridges and eating from dumpsters. So I was officially sixteen. For my present, I got cornered by Uncle Freaky, who announced that I was marked for assassination.

Several years ago, Edward Farrell of Detroit took his two-week summer vacation to Ireland to celebrate his favorite uncle's eightieth birthday. On the morning of the great day, Ed and his uncle got up before dawn, dressed in silence, and went for a walk along the shores of Lake Killarney. Just as the sun rose, his uncle turned and stared straight at the rising orb. Ed stood beside him for twenty minutes with not a single word exchanged. Then the elderly uncle began to skip along the shoreline, a radiant smile on his face. After catching up with him, Ed commented, "Uncle Seamus, you look very happy. Do you want to tell me why?" "Yes, lad," the old man said, tears washing down his face. "You see, the Father is very fond of me. Ah, me Father is very fond of me." ... If you too can answer with gut-level honesty, "Oh yes, the Father is very fond of me," there comes a relaxedness and serenity, a compassionate attitude toward yourself in your brokenness, that elucidates the meaning of tenderness.