Timing is everything

It is now Mary Anne's birthday, in the location where she now resides.

It has been her birthday for a full hour now in those American locales that lie to the east of her fabled demesne; and in parts abroad, foreign climes, and the Lands Beyond, it has been her birthday practically for ever, or at least for some hours.

And yet, those of us who would use the modern miracle of telephony to contact her in these, the first minutes of the day that marks the anniversary of her birth, must grow accustomed to sad disappointment; for in all likelihood, she is, in fact, sleeping through these precious moments, as they slip away, one by one, like seconds in an hourglass.

O woe betide, and sadness!

And so we needs must content ourselves with such small notes as these; messages set adrift in the vasty deeps of the electronic sea, on what strange strands (with what strange horizons) to be cast ashore, no one now alive can tell.

But to those who come after, who awake to the bright morning following the dark night of the soul, to those (I say) whose unknowable futures none can guess, to them I leave the ritual greeting handed down generation upon generation:

Happy birthday, Mary Anne!

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