A Canadian couple in their 40s decide to drive down from British Columbia to spend a few days in the States, get a break from the kids, enjoy the weather, do something different. Maybe taking advantage of their alone time, the conversation turns to aging. Stopping at a McDonald’s on their way home, they pick up a newspaper and read this column.
So I get a nice email from northern neighbors, a little stranger-to-stranger contact, and even though this happens regularly it always lifts my spirits. And reinforces my place on this planet — I write things people read when they’re on their way to do something else. This is about as low-stress a job as I could ask for, and fun. Happy birthday to me.
“Thanks, we wish you well and are glad you are alive,” this woman wrote, riffing on my subject matter but still. The sentiment is appreciated, and I’m glad too, glad to be here and glad for thoughtful people who take the time to drop me a line, glad for all the Facebook folks who sent their wishes this morning, glad for my wife who got giggly last night (”It’s your birthday eve!”), glad I wrapped up loose ends so I could pretend today is a national holiday, and I can do whatever I want.
And glad for the weather, which is very nice, warm, dry and sunny. This is statistically the safest time of year for a picnic or a barbecue, no rain in sight, but I’ll just take it as another gift.
There are lots of those, but I’m practicing brevity these days, so I’ll mention just one. And then I’ll put on my shoes and head out into the sun.
Like a lot of people who found themselves trapped in a dark room, knowing how they got there, surprised all the same, and absolutely baffled on how to get out, I got some solace and eventually even serenity by a particular discipline. I took steps, in other words, every day, to sort through the craziness. I had lots of help.
And for a long time, I’d wake up and think, Today I start over. Today is new. Today I begin again.
Very conventional, cliché. Simple. Start over. One day at a time.
And yet here we are, four years later, and I’m a proud member of the reality-based community. I know that life moves in only one direction. I know that writing new pages won’t erase the old ones. I know I’ve left bread crumbs on the trail, and certain monsters like to follow us. I can’t think at the moment of a single bad thing in my life, major bad or minor, that’s been out of my hands, unable to be averted or at least minimized if I’d at least made a few better decisions. You’re all off the hook.
So I know I’m different. I know I’ve grown, better in some ways, worse in others, and older in all. I may use shorthand for complex ideas, and I might wallow in the clichés a bit because it’s easy to do, but brass tacks? I know I don’t start over every day.
But I start something.
And the fun part of my life, these days, is figuring out what that something is going to be. Like today, my 52nd birthday. Happy to be here, happy to have been, and happy to feel like, for the first time in a very long while, I’m actually playing with a full deck.
