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It was my birthday, and the check, for $35, was intended as a gift. My father is older than President Joe Biden — and I am assured that such an age is very, very old — and he simply transposed the name of the church where he sends regular donations with my name. These things happen.

I’m nowhere near as old as my dad and I already can’t get the names of my kids right when more than three of them are in the same room.

Once, when I tripped on a step at his house, my eldest son helped me up and asked if I was OK — while his younger brothers and sisters laughed at my lack of grace. As he was offering assistance in my time of need, even though I spilled coffee on his white carpet, I thanked him and anointed him my favorite son. Then I called him by the wrong name.

My dad and I get a good laugh out of the check-writing snafu every year around my birthday (which was last week), mostly because I won’t let it go. That’s my way. It’s something my children remind me of every time I begin to tell a story they’ve heard umpteen times.

“Yes, Dad,� they’ll say, before telling me the ending of the story and laughing at my propensity for repetition.

Indeed, I have become my father.

I thought about that a couple of days after my birthday, as my neighbor and I stood on the sidewalk outside our homes talking about the holes in our yards. There has been some utility work in the neighborhood, and some of it is taking longer than expected.

One utility company dug a hole in my neighbor’s yard, trying to fix the severed electrical connection to another neighbor’s home. That connection was cut while the other utility company was burying cable. That utility company is the cause of the hole in my yard. I go outside once a day and stare at it, wondering if it will ever disappear. Should I decorate it for Thanksgiving? Or maybe Christmas? Will it be gone by then?

As my neighbor and I contemplated the holes in our yards, we took a walk down memory lane. Our daughters, who grew up together from the time they were in preschool, are both driving now. And so it has become common to have extra cars in our driveways or parked on the street in front of our houses.

There was a time, my neighbor recalled, when the city frowned on street parking and marked his car for towing when it had been there for a few days. Now all the kids in the neighborhood are driving, and getting down the street is often a lesson in patience, particularly with all the utility trucks not filling up holes in yards.

Times change. Our kids are driving, and soon, they will be gone. There will be no cars in front of the house. But will the holes be gone by then?

I spend a lot of time in my yard. This is what men of a certain age do. We look at the mole tunnels and map out our plan of attack. (I have a mole guy. He’s faster than the utility companies.) We watch the leaves fall and wonder why most of them end up in our yard instead of the one across the street. We fill up our bird feeders and add yet one more layer of protection against squirrels and deer when we think the food is disappearing too fast. We admire our mowed lawns and take satisfaction in a job well done.

I get this trait from my father. He still mows his lawn — take that, Biden! — and he calls me to tell me about it. I will soon be doing the same thing. In the next couple of years, my youngest children will have fled the nest and the house will be quiet, except for the dogs, who don’t care to hear about my lawn-mowing exploits.

So I will call one of the kids to explain the intricacies of my new lawn mower and how it saves me five minutes every time I mow. And I’ll ask if they received the birthday check I put in the mail.

“Dad,� they’ll say, “you sent it to the wrong kid.�