Today’s my birthday. Yes, I do get a lot of “May the Fourth be with you” comments. I just shrug it off that my birthday, to some, is an unofficial Star Wars holiday.

Since I’m an older adult, I’m thinking a lot today about friends and relatives that I’ve celebrated birthdays with in the past who are gone.

My favorite birthdays?

One definitely was a surprise birthday party I had when I was 14. I thought I might be having a surprise party because neither of my good friends, Verneta Harris or Betty Holmes, gave me a present during the day when we were at school. They usually did.

So, I rode home on the bus, and there my friends were at my house. Two moms drove the middle-school party goers down the hill from Chelan and across the Columbia River to Orondo in Douglas County to our house at the edge of the apple orchard.

This is me at 14 standing in front of a blooming apple tree.

Diane Smith, left, and Carolyn Loudenback enjoy cake.

My friends decide, for some reason, to pose on an orchard ladder, from top, Linda Blessin, Joanne Davis, Lynne Paulson, Betty Holmes, Carolyn Loudenback, Verneta Harris, Rita Slingsby, Diane Smith. Richard Harris, right.

It was a great memory, and the only surprise party I ever had, I think.

Happy birthday to me. And May the Fourth be with you.