{"id":866,"date":"2008-04-17T23:38:11","date_gmt":"2008-04-18T03:38:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/2008\/04\/17\/happy-birthday-g-bo\/"},"modified":"2008-04-18T00:08:28","modified_gmt":"2008-04-18T04:08:28","slug":"happy-birthday-g-bo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/archives\/866","title":{"rendered":"Happy Birthday, G-bo&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My dad would have been 85 today. I\u2019m not sure exactly why I choose to contemplate that, or perhaps it\u2019s not a conscious choice, but rather a natural, reflexive thought\u2014when the birthday of someone I miss this much sneaks up on me. The older I get, the more complexity I confront when I think about the ways his influence has affected me. I tell myself I would\u2019ve surely arrived at the level of intimacy he sought from me, if indeed I was helping to celebrate his 85th birthday today&#8230;<a href='http:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/2006\/04\/17\/two-spirits-one-heart\/' title='gbo.jpg'><img src='http:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/04\/gbo.jpg' alt='gbo.jpg' \/ hspace=\"17\" vspace=\"11\" align=\"left\"><\/a> then I stop to look at how significantly his departure has also shaped me, and I don\u2019t even know who I would actually be if he was still here, 15 years after his final birthday. I had my cholesterol checked today and it was 150, due, I like to think, in large measure to the changes I began to make after he died, knowing I carried all the same cardiac risk factors and predispositions. Would I have changed my lifestyle so dramatically if I hadn\u2019t lost him? It\u2019s a question that can\u2019t be answered. It\u2019s probably a question that needn\u2019t be asked. Anyway, I say to myself, \u201cHe would certainly admire your consistency in taking care of yourself physically.\u201d That notion helps me stay motivated. He would want me to overcome the pitfalls of our mutual heritage, and to make the most of our best genes. Nevertheless, he would have equal concern for all of the \u201cme\u201d that isn\u2019t physical. Staying in salubrious condition without a mentor is easy, compared to finding my way to serenity without a father, but that\u2019s just the way the bunny thumps&#8230; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My dad would have been 85 today. I\u2019m not sure exactly why I choose to contemplate that, or perhaps it\u2019s not a conscious choice, but rather a natural, reflexive thought\u2014when the birthday of someone I miss this much sneaks up on me. The older I get, the more complexity I confront when I think about [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71,7,68,21,18,34],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/866"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=866"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/866\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}