I don’t remember my seventh birthday at all, even though I have a number of memories from the year I turned seven. I remember second grade reasonably well, and the kids that I played with. My brother Dan was born in November of that year. The day he was born, I was in a Thanksgiving play in my class, playing the part of Plymouth Colony Governor William Bradford. In the early summer of 1971, right after school finished for the year, my family moved from Massachusetts to Maine, where I would spend the rest of my childhood (and then some). But I haven’t got even the merest hint of what happened on my birthday in August 1970.

Today is Charlotte’s seventh birthday. I can’t help but wonder how much of this time of her life she will remember and how much of it she will turn to me and to Bridget to remember for her. I wish I felt that I would be a better resource for that. My memory was infallible and complete for so many years, but not any more. I am grateful that I have written so much about her here over the last seven years, because now I must rely on this eternal and universal memory myself. From what I can decipher from our conversations, Charlotte’s active memory now goes back about three years. She doesn’t really remember our trip to London and Paris, she doesn’t have a lot of clear memories about her time at her first day care (where she went every day from the age of four months to four years), and only some vague recollections about my heart surgery. Her memories of this time will be clearer, but by the time she reaches her middle age it’s likely she won’t have a complete recollection.

So, Charlotte, on this, your seventh birthday: the sky was bright blue and sunny when we rose from bed, with puffy white clouds that eventually covered the sun for the afternoon. You climbed in my bed while Mom wrapped your birthday presents; you woke me up with cartoons (a recent habit of yours), but I convinced you to let me watch the first few minutes of the Today Show. It’s the middle of an election year, but the American news could only talk about the brain cancer diagnosis that will take the life of Senator Ted Kennedy possibly before your eighth birthday. I tried to tell you about him this morning, but you weren’t particularly interested.

Today in school you are doing a big presentation about cheetahs for your classmates. All the first graders in your school have had to do a report about an “organism”, and you choose cheetahs. For the last couple of weeks, you and Mom and I have been looking at books about cheetahs, finding pictures and videos of cheetahs on the Internet, and we even made a trip to the Roger Williams Park Zoo in Rhode Island to see a live cheetah. The poor animal is 17 years old and dying and all she could do was lie prostrate on the ground, but see her we did. Maybe you will remember that, and maybe you’ll remember the three of us putting together your display board and rehearsing your report the way I remember being William Bradford with my little black construction paper Pilgrim hat.

Your birthday party won’t be for a couple of weeks because your schedule is so booked solid with practices, games, rehearsals, and the annual dance recital. So tonight we’re surprising you with a trip to a fondue restaurant for a chocolate fondue experience. Even if you don’t remember that in years to come, I know you’ll get a huge kick out of it now.

Most of all, the one thing I hope you will always remember is that I love you more than anyone or anything else ever in my whole life. As you grow up and have all the experiences that yet lie ahead, I will save as many of these memories for you as I have the power to do. Together we can cherish the ones we both recall, soften the ones we’ll wish we didn’t recall, and I will share as much as my own waning memory can summon from the time before yours could save them. Happy Seventh Birthday, Charlotte.