A few days ago, someone asked me what I was going to do for my birthday.  Drive to Denver, I said.  He stopped, reversed, looked back at me.  Denver?

Most people just say, “Dinner.  I’m going out to dinner.”

But I felt drawn to Denver and Jessica did as well,  so off we went.  And though the room is not quite the “well-appointed suite” that its lessor described, and my toothache returned a couple of hundred miles west of Topeka, I’m not complaining.  The shadow of the mountains soothes any ache I might think of having.  The air draws into my lungs more easily.

And this face, this face of my beautiful shared daughter Tshandra White, sat beside me on the airy patio of a charming Mexican-American restaurant in north Denver.  Any hint of moaning in which I might be tempted to indulge fades away.