They Say It's My Birthday

Today is my birthday. As I have for the last however-many years, I greet today’s anniversary with indifference. I wish neither to celebrate nor to be celebrated. I want no gifts. To mark the occasion, I will tolerate a meal at a decent (but not expensive) restaurant with my wife, and will allow myself a slice of cake, preferably coconut.

Yes, I’m a crank about birthdays because I am going to die soon. When I say “soon,” I don’t mean that I’m sick, only that my time on this planet is coming to an end within, at best, the next few decades. Birthdays are an annual reminder of that actuarial fact, a fact which hardly seems worthy of celebration.

As for my age, I am 52, a number which seems impossibly high. All birthdays after the age of 40 have felt implausible to me, as if the years are Jenga pieces placed every more precariously atop each other. 52.  It’s one of those insignificant numbers, a mile marker on the way to the next decade. What do people 52 years of age even do with themselves? Nap, I suppose. And reflect.

I’m not sure at what age people stop celebrating their birthdays by looking ahead and start celebrating their birthday by looking back. As a kid, turning 9 or 11 or 13 was all about projecting myself into the future: the things I would do, the new privileges I will gain, the year’s potential. Now it’s about contemplating where I’ve been and what I’ve learned. Soon, no doubt, birthdays will also include what’s been lost. Thankfully, this year I am still of sound body and mind. Nobody I love went to their grave this past year and, for that, I am grateful.

My gratitude also extends to what I’ve learned since my last birthday. I learned to live abroad. I learned a little more about who I am, in contrast to who I thought I was - and I made some small peace with that. I made a few new friends. I ate a lot of anchovies. I spent much time thinking about spaces beyond this one. I did some good writing and some bad. I worried about money. I wore the same pair of sweatpants to bed for probably 200 out of the last 365 nights, but only washed them a couple times. I started playing Scrabble again, which feels appropriate for a man about to enter his AARP years.

I certainly don’t feel like I thought somebody of my advanced years would feel. If I had to peg an age to how I actually feel, I’d peg it at somewhere in my mid-30’s. When I was actually in my mid-30’s, in the early years of raising two children, I felt harried and irritable, barely able to cope with my own insecurities and doubts as a father, husband, and person somehow responsible for the well-being of other people. I wish I could have those years back. It’s not just youth that is wasted on the young. It’s every age. Every moment of every day could be improved upon with a do-over, but we’re only given that opportunity in our minds. In my mind, then, I am two decades younger than my driver’s license suggests.

In body, however, my elbows hurt.

I have not yet reached an age where I am inclined to talk about my growing list of physical maladies. They are still minor but every creak and tremble reminds me that I am racing my own telomeres. There are scientists hard at work curing aging, but so far they have merely extended the lifespans of mice; it seems to me they should be concentrating their efforts on people.

How cruel that time accelerates as we age. The days whiz by with frightening quickness. The years are blurs out a train window. Sometimes I do not even recognize the particular configuration of digits that represent the year in which we are living: 2023? That hardly seems possible. Even as I typed the numbers out, I had to double-check to make sure they were correct.

(Even as I proofread this piece before publishing, I had to check again.)

I share a birthday and birth year with a few celebrities, including Pete Sampras. The passing years must be harder on somebody like him, a person who once made his living with his youth. Young bodies can handle so much. They are vibrant, versatile things. I imagine somebody like that mourns the passing years in a more profound way because he is so much more aware of what he has lost. That’s one advantage of having never been in shape. I never knew the limits of my own body so I don’t mind that I can never again reach those limits. If anything, the fact that I’m in as good physical shape as I am at this age is a source of some relief. That being said, I will reiterate that my elbows hurt.

Maybe I’ll do something great in my fifty-second year. After all, I still have a list of things I’d like to accomplish. I’d like to direct a movie. I’d like to write a novel. I’d like to get a little further down the path I’m walking. I’d like to wash my sweatpants. It’s trite but true - the number of our years doesn’t matter very much. We are however old we feel ourselves to be. We can celebrate or not. I choose not. I don’t need any balloons. I don’t need any presents. It’s enough to be able to sit here and think about things. And, later, I’ll be happy to eat one slice of cake, preferably coconut.