“That’s just the minutiae that doesn’t matter” was my mother’s response when I asked her what she used to do to celebrate my dad’s birthday.

Minutiae. The meaning of the word fell on my mother’s deaf ears, while it reverberated loudly in my own. To her, the minutiae of everyday life were trifles to be cast aside, moments to be thrown away. To me, the minutiae of everyday life, particularly those involving my father, are the treasures which give life its value. They give life to the lifeless. They help to fill the void left by too many years unlived.

It is the minutiae of everyday life that I miss the most when anniversaries appear on the calendar, such as my father’s birthday.

It struck me as I was reading the obituaries written about James Garner, a man so rich in talent and character, that while he was 86 years old at the time of his death, most of the pictures accompanying the retrospectives were of a young man. They were of a man in his prime of his career.

When I think of my dad, I think of him as both a middle-aged man and as a young man at the start of his professional life. That’s because my memories of him are as influenced by photos as they are by the recollections of a six-year old. Oddly, when I see a white-haired man who could be in his early 40s, I often take a second look. That is the father I remember from actual memory.

There are certain things I do remember, such as the last real birthday party we had for him. It was the Big 4-0. My mom had arranged for a surprise party on July 24, 1975. She went all-out. Well, kind of all-out. Colleagues and friends were invited, members of our extended family flew into Cincinnati for the party. And Mom had mock masks made up, so that when my father arrived he would be greeted by, well, almost a hundred people “wearing” his face. Thinking back it is kinda creepy, but not creepy in a criminal prosecution kind of way.

And that is about all I remember. But I want to know more. I have spent my life trying to know more. So, I called my dad’s sister to ask what they did as a family to celebrate birthdays. She could not remember. After all, birthdays are the minutiae of everyday life. She thought some more. Maybe he had chocolate cake because he liked chocolate. Or maybe the family waited to until he came home from camp, which he went to every summer.

Minutiae maybe, but learning Dad went to “away” camp each summer was something I never knew. That one unremarkable detail added a little more clarity to the picture I have of my father.

She thought a bit more. Maybe he and his father went to a Brooklyn Dodgers game. After all, she said, he was a diehard Dodgers fan. A diehard Dodgers fan? In one moment, in one sentence I felt closer to my father. He loved baseball. Just as I do. Even better, he was not a Yankees fan. He was old-school. He was a Dodgers fan.

I told my brother and he said that might explain why his twin boys, Carson and Bode, are such baseball fans too. In one sentence, my father became more real to me and to my brother. He became more alive.

As elated as I am to have learned something new, it is a feeling of elation tinged with bittersweet regret. I have gained insight, but cannot help but to think of the moments lost. The moments that we could have shared at a Reds game, particularly during the years of the Big Red Machine. I miss having discussions or fights about whether Pete Rose should be in the Hall of Fame. I miss losing the time in the backyard throwing the ball back and forth and talking about nothing. Or not even talking at all.

It is the minutiae of everyday life that I miss the every July 24. Happy 79th Birthday, Dad.