Many happy returns!
My birthday was last Saturday, and it was a beautiful day. I turned 38. There were no parades, no one walked in front of me strewing my path with rose-petals. I got turned around driving to pick up breakfast for the other volunteers at the radio station in the morning, on my way to help with the pledge drive. No one chiseled a statue of me or hired a sky-writer to inscribe HAPPY BIRTHDAY JEN in puffy cloud-letters overhead. I drove in the city in the sunshine. I walked to Penn Station to see a beautiful mural. Small flocks of birds did not drape me in bunting or sing magical songs overhead. I ate a meal I enjoyed, took a nap, and went to a bar with some dear friends, where we talked and laughed and drank beer and ate cake. What more could I ask for?
When I was small, birthdays really were kind of magical. Cake, presents, parties! Streamers, hats, music! A day off from homework! A slumber party, a seance! Somewhere along the way it became routine: magical routine. I came to expect it. I would get so excited about my next birthday that in the months leading up to it I would be so focused on the age I was about to turn that if someone asked me how old I was it was a struggle to say the correct age, not to give myself that one-year nudge forward a little early. To be completely honest with you, I still do this a little. The other month someone asked how old I was and the first thing I thought was, “Almost 38!” “Thanks for asking, I’m thirty-seven and three quarters!”
Birthdays are worth celebrating. We go through a lot in a year, and we gain so many things along the way. Sometimes they are things we want to gain, like new friendships or renewed focus or fresh perspective on a troublesome old problem. Sometimes we gain things we don’t want, like the persistent and pervasive sadness of grief. Wanting or expecting magic is selling yourself short, distracting yourself listening for imaginary symphonies written to you while ignoring the very real and true person you are becoming, more every day. Everything we gain, even loss, leaves its mark. The more I think about it, the more I think it’s foolish to try to cover those marks. Bring me the beauty of life that comes from pain as well as joy, let me have the reward of walking still with an eye towards what will come as well as what has passed.
I can ask for nothing more. Bring on another year with all it has for me, for all of us. After all, I’m thirty-eight and three days old. And I’ve still got some leftover cake!
March 9, 2010
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Jen · 
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Tags: birthday, self · Posted in: Uncategorized
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