This is how you spend your 40th birthday, if you happen to be M.
First, we let you sleep late. And by late I mean until almost eight o’clock.
Then you are serenaded and feted over our traditional birthday breakfast.

After which you pile into the minivan en masse to watch your son’s final Sunday baseball game of the season, complete with protesting, screaming six year old, perennially cranky three year old, and several others. Halfway to the game you realize that you and your wife forgot to take two cars (as discussed) and now, you will all have to go to the Little League post party, instead of sneaking home for some down time as you planned.
Trophies are given.

Once you’re home and your big day is more than half over, you and the same son sit down to work on a class project … Which finds you building Noah’s ark out of graham crackers, royal icing, and mini marshmallows. Happy birthday to you.
Beginning:

Middle:

And end:

Apparently if it’s your birthday, you get to give Noah a tall, blonde hoochie-mama wife, and it’s more than ok if she’s wearing hot pants and he’s staring at her boobs. Efram can tell the rabbis at school that his dad helped him.
Oh, then there’s an end of year basketball dinner for another child. More trophies are given.
For my fortieth next year, I have made several demands, not the least of which is a continental move. I would not smile my way through a day of parental responsibility, nonplussed that I had to share the spotlight with little leaguers and marshmallows. But I am not half the person, or the parent, that M is…
Happy birthday M.