He would have turned 77 today

Ever since I had learned counting days, weeks, months and years, I could have never correctly guess my parents' birthdays. It is not that I have a memory related or a calculus problem. It is a simple fact that they both were born in February. As long as I remember, their birthdays were sort of same to me. Here they are, February 4th and February 26th. As far as I am concerned, those dates have sounded to me as real as February 6th or February 24th. My brain does work in mysterious ways indeed. Furthermore, it is not just the that February-something digit problem I have had since forever. Year after year, I kept forgetting which birthday was to come first in February, my mother's or my father's.

In November 2005, my father passed away. In an emotional shock, that I went through, I was kind of enlightened by the fact that his birthday was actually easy to distinct from my mother's. He was born in 1931. Last two digits, when multiplied, give 62. When I switch the digits in 62, I get 26. And that is his birthday, the February 26th. On the other hand, my mother was born in 1942. The last two digits are 4 and 2. Need I say that her birthday is 4th of February? So here they are, those dates. I could not see it through, all these years.

I am not sure which one to wonder more about, the fact that it took me 30 years to figure out the way to remember my parents' birthdays, or, the wondering way, that their years of birth are interconnected with their birthdays.

I do have this thing with digits, I kind of see them. My perception of the world I live in somehow intercepts with numbers, that at the end of the day come down as a silent explanation for the things I cannot rationally explain. Do not ask me what I mean with that sentence. It is the way my brain works.

And the very fact, that I am writing about digits on my late father's birthday does not mean I love him less. It's just the way my brain works. I might have as well just expressed my love to him. Read between the lines.

Had he lived longer, he would have turned 77 today. I miss him so much.