Angel's Sixtieth Birthday

Yesterday was the Big Day. Angel turned Sixty. I didn't know what I was going to do to celebrate the day. I had been in a bad space for weeks, only recently coming out from under my dark cloud. The weather is beastly hot, some days so hot and still, you can't breathe. I didn't want to cook up a storm to give a dinner at home with friends. So I did something new, invited our two best 'couple' friends to dinner at my favorite restaurant, the one I always return to for comfort and special times, La Taverna di via Stella.














Angel had left at 6:10 AM for a Gruppo Uno club ride. Ten years ago, for his fiftieth birthday party, at our home in New Jersey, he had gone out in the morning with friends for another birthday ride, but he didn't know there was a big surprise party in the making at home, and so was about an hour late for his own party. For this birthday, I told him ahead of time that something was planned for Saturday evening; he made it back to the house at 8:30 PM, and was showered, dressed and at the restaurant at 9 PM. Bravo.

This was one of those magical evenings in Italy with friends, where everything goes exactly as it is supposed to, smoothly, flawlessly in fact. Each of our 'couple' friends was meeting the other for the first time, and they hit it off terrifically. Our waitress was on top of everything. The food was delicious. What more could we ask? There have been evenings like this in New Jersey, of course. But this evening was a coming together of all the elements...our beaming host, Paolo, wishing Angel 'Auguri!'; our excellent waitress, asking me throughout the evening, 'Va bene?' We were taken care of. Dinner started at 9. We were the last ones in the Taverna, leaving at 11:30 to many wishes of 'Buona Notte'.