So what if nobody came? I’ll have all the ice cream and tea,
And I’ll laugh with myself, and I’ll dance with myself,
And I’ll sing, ‘Happy birthday to me!’ – Shel Silverstein
Behind the birthday-suited body in these sepia-shaded photographs from the distant past is the beginning of a Thuja ‘Steeplechase’ hedge which I planted in the early years of our home. Today, that group of shrubs towers above us, providing privacy and protection, and a home for birds. There are a lot of years in those Steeplechases.
There are also a lot of years in this body, so I’ve been making some efforts to take better care of it, both the interior and the exterior. I’m even getting around to taking care of the ultra-interior. I’m not talking colonoscopy yet, but rather the inner-workings of the mind. Culling from the past – a past that finds its way to the surface on this day of all days – and the delicate observations that result, brings a certain peace after a certain tumult. It’s a similar feeling of relief and release that comes after a hard cry or tough argument. Maybe it’s the same sort of unburdening that comes after an entire year of living through one more spin around the sun.
I’m expecting this 2020 birthday to be slightly shaded with melancholy. How could it not be given all that’s been happening in the world? To be honest, at some point in every birthday there is usually a moment tinged with contemplative somberness, a point at which I pause in mournful reverence. Birthdays have always been a strange combination of celebration and ending. Coinciding with the almost-end of summer, the end of summer vacation, and the end of another year on earth, they were a time of reflection, and because I was never one to enjoy big birthday parties and crowded birthday get-togethers, I often felt intentionally alone and quiet on this day.
At 45 years of age, I am finally embracing that as my baseline and preference. It took all that time to be fully comfortable in my skin, to be ok with being quiet and reserved, to not being the star attraction or mirrorball around which the party revolves. That realization is a birthday gift of its own.
