One of the ways in which I take after my dad is that I sweat profusely when I exercise. I remember him coming home from his “jogs” when I was a kid, his Mickey Mouse T-shirt and his 1970’s terrycloth headband (not excessively dorky, as these were the 1970’s) wringing wet. And I’m the same: when I get off the treadmill every morning, you would think I’d been doing something far more strenuous than an hour’s brisk walk. (You’ve heard that expression? “Horses sweat, men perspire, ladies glow.” Fuck no, this is sweating—sopping shirt, dripping face, and all.)

This morning’s treadmill-hour was punctuated with interruptions: birthday-wishes arriving from my sister, from my staff, a singing-phone-call from my mom. (I always have to wring out my T-shirt. I don’t usually have to wipe down my phone.) When she finished with the Birthday Song, my mother said to me that—although more recently this date is the anniversary of my father’s death—she still celebrates that this day 52 years ago was “the best day of my LIFE” to that point. In return I thanked her for her work that day—especially since my arrival was a full 48-hour project, begun oh-so-appropriately on the holiday we call Labor Day…

She also read to me a message from her brother, sent in acknowledgement of this anniversary of Dad’s exit and my arrival, in which he wrote that my path has been unexpected and arduous and he’s proud of me. One of the other ways in which I take after my dad is my alcoholism. Dad actually followed me into Sobriety—but he stuck the landing far better than I! He stayed Sober the eight years until he died. (By contrast, it took me fifteen years to rack up eight consecutive years Sober… And—once again—I don’t have eight years Sober now. “Alcohol is cunning, baffling, powerful,” the A.A. Book warns us. It is ALWAYS lurking. Waiting. Ready to pounce.)

After we both got Sober, Dad and I shared some conversations about it. About our drinking. About our Sobriety. Some of those conversations evinced the darkish, rueful humor of Sober alcoholics, who can chuckle over a past because we’ve been freed from it. We discovered, for example, that we’d shared some habits in “getting rid of the carcasses,” as Dad referred to empty bottles. (Both of us hid bottles in used cat litter, because nobody was going to go pawing through that and find them!) And some of our conversations highlighted the JOYS we’d found, in being freed from the grip of our addiction.

Ten years ago this weekend there was no celebrating in our family. Jon and I had planned a camping trip for the long Labor Day weekend—but almost at the last minute, he got it into his head that we needed to go visit my parents instead. (I’ve thought, many times since, that God must have nudged him.) And on the morning of my birthday my mother’s voice pierced the house, my name in an urgent wail I’d never heard from her before. Jon stopped me at the foot of the stairs and he went to her instead: Dad had died in the night. For all his health problems, we hadn’t seen that coming.

His mind had begun to wander, rather suddenly—he was having periods of saying nonsensical things, and then periods of coming back to himself and being distressed by the wandering. I will forever be grateful that we were present that weekend… that Jon and I (who had both been widowed ourselves) were both there with—and for—my mother… and that the last words I said to my father in this life, kissing him good night after an evening of his alternating wandering-and-distress, were: “It’s okay, Daddy. God’s got you.”

It crossed my mind, that weekend, that my birthday might be permanently “ruined”… but it has become a “shared” day, instead. September 4th is Dad’s day and mine, now. God’s got us both.