Having Age
Birthday presents
Tomorrow is my birthday. I’m not a birthday guy, generally. My general disposition does not lend itself to informal socialization, so parties are work. I also haven’t had a need to do anything special because I’ve done the same thing for every birthday of my life, barring pandemics and whatnot.
I’m very aware of the privilege that comes with not having to worry too much about how to celebrate myself. My mother’s birthday is four days before mine, so we’ve shared a birthday tradition for my entire life. Memorial Day weekend means birthdays and, once upon a time, dock maintenance at the house my Grandfather built on a beautiful lake in Wisconsin. I wrote about it a while back:
As birthdays are mostly scripted for me, I don’t think about them much. This year, though, is the complicated one for me. It’s not bad, and in fact it feels like an epic accomplishment, but it’s complicated.
For years now, one of my go-to personal stories in classrooms and office hours is about my realization that my mother had age. A specific age. I realized my mother had an age at her 45th birthday. I don’t know why. I assume someone said the number or it was printed on a ha-ha-you’re-middle-aged birthday card. At any rate, I realized my mother had an age.
The story, which clearly lacks detail, emerges in conversations with students because they are negotiating lives that no longer have scripts. Their age permits them to celebrate their birthdays or not celebrate their birthdays, just as they can decide whether to show up for writing workshops or not show up for writing workshops. Their age allows them to brush their teeth or not brush their teeth or try meth or not try meth.
Having age means the choices you make now might look different from the perch of a different age. Your 45th birthday is going to be different from your 12th birthday or your 22nd birthday.
As I climb to Perch 45, my mother looks different than she did when I was 12 or 22. From Perch 45, I can be grateful for things I did not know to be grateful for at the age when the gratitude was earned. It’s complicated.
I’m the age my mother was when I realized she had age. I think I like it.
So, I made myself a gift. It started as a trellis for my vine monster mutant in the backyard. I wrote about the mutant previously:
It turned into a whole situation.
I’m a terrible carpenter. When my mother was 45, my father tried to teach me, but it didn’t take. What he and my mother did successfully teach me is how to learn how to do things, how to create something, and that I get to choose whether or not to use a tape measure.
And I want my students to know that those lessons are why I’m a pretty happy 45 year-old.