By Leah S. Dunaief

My last birthday, which we celebrated a couple of weeks ago, has been rough. But I am expecting a turn of fortune for the better, because bad things come in threes, and now I’ve experienced all three. Sharing the miseries generally makes one feel better, so here goes.

The first started off happily enough. 

I had been invited to a wedding reception in Maine. Now any excuse to go to Maine is a wonderful happening, in my mind, and it’s not just for the blueberry jam and the lobster rolls. The state is physically beautiful, with a shoreline that has attracted artists over the centuries. To go there in August is to get away from the heavy heat of summer. It is also no cultural sacrifice since summer stock and art galleries are to be found in many of the small towns and cities. Good museums too.

So we packed up the car and left a day early to have some exploratory time before the party. In our roaming, we met people from all over the country who had come with the same idea about vacationing in the northernmost New England State. When we arrived at our destination, we remembered and ate in a couple of our favorite restaurants and also enjoyed socializing with the 140 wedding guests as well as with others at the hotel over the Bacchanal weekend.

So far, so good, right?

When we returned home, as a result of all that socializing, we found we had brought an unwelcome guest back with us: a tenacious microbe that had taken up residence in our upper respiratory anatomy. Whether bacteria or virus, it has so far withstood two different antibiotic assaults and still troubles us with deep seated coughs. This was alarming because the family was arriving immediately upon our return to celebrate my birthday, and we didn’t want to share the bug. But that was just the first of the three miseries.

The morning of my birthday dawned sunny and warm, so we sat on the wooden back deck and ate breakfast. At one point, I had to blow my nose and stepped away from the table, walking the length of the deck to do so. Turning back, I stepped on one of the narrow boards in exactly the right way to cause it to fall through the deck, along with my left leg. It happened, as they say, like a bolt from the blue, and I fell backwards and screamed. It took two family members to extricate me, and I bear the discoloration and contusions on both sides of my lower leg as it heals. If you should see me around town, that explains my limp and wince as I walk.

Somehow, I was most outraged by the fact that it happened on my birthday. “My” day shouldn’t have started off that way.

The irony of the story is that the carpenter was scheduled to come to repair the deck the Monday after my children were to leave. He had offered to do the job the week before, but I didn’t want repairs to mar the family visit, and besides, I was away in Maine so I had put him off. Whoops, bad timing. A further irony is that I had placed a flowerpot on the bad board to prevent anyone stepping there, but it had been moved just before our return from Maine. Was this an accident fated to happen?

As to the third, I was driving to a dinner date last night when I realized a migraine was about to hit me. It always starts with a visual aura, in which zigzagging lines cross my vision much as, in the early days, a television screen used to break up when there was a disturbance overhead. I don’t get them often, but they are most unpleasant when they are triggered, this time perhaps by the medicines I am taking. 

Three and done, now, I hope. Thanks for letting me vent.