Room & Board: $6.50/day

For my 65th birthday blip, I thought this bill from the hospital I where I was born would be an interesting artifact. (There was also a bill from the doctor, in addition to this one for my mother's seven-day hospital stay, but I couldn't find it in my box of old family documents.)

The photo of my grandmother holding me is the only one here that shows me as a newborn. The other two, of my mother and my father holding me, were taken a couple of months later -- no doubt they were glad that I was past the red-faced squalling stage.

I was the seventh of my grandmother's fourteen grandchildren and the first child of her only daughter. It's interesting to contrast this picture of my grandmother holding my mother, when the latter was about five or six months old, with the photo of my mother holding me. Just over a quarter century had gone by, but the world -- and fashion -- had changed a great deal.

(I had originally intended to write a bit about my mother and father as well, but our family dynamics were complex, and not something I want to get into on my birthday. Besides, it's almost time to check in for our night at the Chrysalis Inn in Fairhaven, overlooking Bellingham Bay -- Phil's lovely birthday gift to me.)