Looking Out My Back Door: Exactly when I wanted to forget

Some days, despite all the good things in my life, I wake up and would rather crawl back into bed and pull the quilt over my head. Pity party is another word for the feeling. Party, well, yes, party. I woke up with an ugly thought, “Today is my birthday.”

Seventy-one seems a number without much pizzazz. Seventy or seventy-five or one hundred — now those numbers have class. Milestone numbers. My number seems rather in-betweeny. How old are you? Mumbley mumble.

Then Teresa walked over and turned my party upside down.

“I’d like you to drive to the border with me. I don’t want...