Hi everyone. Jonathan here. Today is my birthday (March 18) and in honor of that event, we decided to go visit Oakland Cemetery.
Okay, technically, the two are unrelated, but I’ve decided that contemplating one’s own mortality on one’s birthday is actually a cool idea. This may become what we do for my birthday from here on out!
What really happened, was that in the middle of my solid block of meetings, a glorious two hours opened up unexpectedly, so we decided to go check out Oakland Cemetery. It had been on our list for a while and Jill was planning to take the kids anyway when I popped out of my office are and said “can I come too?”
The cemetery itself is beautiful.
At its founding in 1850, it was six acres, but over time it’s grown to 48 acres. The original six acres is more garden than cemetery and a good portion of it had bulb flowers growing on the graves. There are benches and trees and super intricate graves.
Basically, it was one of the least somber cemeteries I’ve ever been to. It is the kind of place I’d want to be buried (see? Contemplating the nature of mortality on one’s birthday! Cool thing!)
There are some pretty famous folks buried in Oakland, including Margaret Mitchell, the author of Gone with the Wind. We made our way over to her grave and took pictures.
We wandered around and saw a good bit of the cemetery, but we could easily have stayed there another couple of hours. Here are some highlights:
The Confederate section
So many headstones. Sobering reminder of how awful war can be. Interesting to visit in light of all the moves towards removing confederate statues. (Pretty sure there used to be a confederate flag flying there once, but it’s not there now)
The Jewish section
The headstones were incredibly intricate and closely packed in.
At this point, we were reaching our limits. And I had to get back to work for a meeting at 11. So we jumped back in the car and headed back to the homestead.
On the way back, though, we stopped at The Little Tart Bakeshop. I actually had considered getting something from there on Pi day, but the timing didn’t work out. So, it was serendipitous that it’s right next to the cemetery!
I got chocolate croissants, strawberry galettes, and chocolate cookies and we bolted back home.
As we were driving back, the heavens opened and it began to rain. Nothing like cheering up a visit to the cemetery on your birthday with a bit of rain, right?
I had meetings and the rest of the family feasted on treats.
Later that afternoon, the kids insisted that I open the presents that they had gotten for me. There we so sweet — they had each gotten me something with their own allowance 😭😭😭.
Logan got me an AirPods case that looks like a miniature bottle of gatorade, Jonas got me an escape room in a box that we can do together as a family, and Clara got me a T-shirt that says “It only took me 40 years to look this good.”
You may be asking why Clara got me a 40th birthday shirt. Well, one of my favorite YouTubers, Hank Green said in one of his videos that when he turned 36 or so, he started telling people he was 40. And by the time he turned 40, he was so used to the idea of being 40 years old, that it wasn’t a big deal anymore.
I told this to Clara at one point and she obviously remembered.
So Happy 40th birthday to me 🙂
The rest of the day was pretty uneventful. It’s moving day tomorrow, so we stayed pretty low key and worked on packing. And we did family movie night and watched Remember the Titans. We’ll finish celebrations when we’re in Nashville.
