It doesn’t seem right. Fifty is pretty old, and I am just sure I am neither pretty, nor old. One of the best parts of the day apart from being with my immediate family, has been hearing from old friends wishing me a happy birthday. I love them all, and some are really special people. I wish I could gather them all up and share the day with them.
It has been so good to hear from a select few who I have known all the way back to elementary school, where we first met in grades three or five, when I moved to the same school twice during those years. It’s good to have so many years. It is good to look at their photos online and know just what they looked like and how they acted as kids. Some are great friends, some are best friends.
I have am sure that a mature man does not exist, but rather a man gets too old to get up to his old shenanigans.
I remember well a lady I met when I was just 23, and she was in her eighties, in an assisted living home in California. I don’t remember her name, but she used to enjoy my visits when I delivered her medications from the pharmacy I worked at while I was in college. We talked about life, and about aging one day, and she said that age is a funny thing, because in her mind she was still in her 20’s, but her body just wasn’t cooperating with that. I have found it strange that somewhere inside my head, I have always been every age I have ever been, and it is just my body that is getting older. Some folks out there are no doubt reading this and thinking, “Oh, you just wait.”
Another lady I met while working at the pharmacy was quite sad, and when I spoke with her, she said to me that she was eager to die. I could not understand why. When I asked, her reply was a sullen, “Because I am just so tired.” She was not litteraly tired. She was tired of life and all of the things that had happened to her during hers. She was tired of getting older and everyone she knew leaving before her. She was tired of loss and the changes in the world that made it so different to what it was when she was younger and spry, and happy.
As for me, I am just chugging along. Each day comes and goes. I am lucky to have young kids still at home, but I also am sad sometimes that I am so tired and sore that I cannot give them the play and fun I think they should have out of their father. They are the most amazing people, and I want so much for them to grow up happy and to live full lives. Their mom gives so much to make that happen. I wish I could give them more myself.
I had been really hoping to get a tractor for out little farm this year. Secretly, one of the big reasons I wanted one has been to pile snow up high for the girls to slide down, and to play on, or build ice castles out of. We have some repairs that have got to be done on the house, and it looks like those are going to wipe out that dream. I may be able to get one later, but the girls are growing up, and I am going to end up missing the older one’s childhood, and time when she would have enjoyed that. Obviously there are a hell of a lot of other reasons for a tractor, too, but that has been one reason I have been working so hard to try to make it happen this year.
Well, kids will grow up, all the same.
Fifty is a time for a bit of reflecting, I think. I mean, sure, it is just another number. But it is a pretty big number, and a round number, and a middle to late number, perhaps. I had a great-great-grandfather who lived from the late 1700’s to the early 1900’s. He wrote poetry on his hundredth birthday. Who knows, maybe this is just my midpoint reflection? Who knows how these things go? Pain is not an exciting prospect, but death doesn’t scare me. I have seen it’s face before. It’s not living that is frightening. Not living life while it is here! It is becoming the lady who is too tired to want to be here. It is giving up. That is the kind of thing that does not suit me at all.
So here we go. Thinking of old friends, thinking of kids, and also thinking of my dear wife, and how much she means to me, and how important she is in my life. Whatever happens in the next fifty years, I don’t know what to expect. One day, another, and another. “What ever happens, happens, and when it does, I’ll just happen along with it.”
I love the people in my life. I miss the old friends. I wish only to keep pressing on, and to not give up on it all, and never let the bad outweigh the good. I am tired. I am sore. I am in pain almost constantly, and really love and live during those few times when I am not. And sometimes life is just waiting time till the good times come again, and trying to keep a positive attitude. And if I am just too tired to get up to some old shenanigans, then I hope that all of what I can do is done with class. And that is where I am at now. Striving for a little class in the way I behave, and at least a little something for everyone I meet to smile. That’s is how I will continue to give them the love.
Anyway, this is rambling on and on now, and I need to stop boring you, reader. But if you are Russ, or Robin, you are still my best friends. If you are Adria, Andria, Sherly, you still amaze me. If you are someone I met through Facebook, thank you for being a part of my life, and I am glad to know you. If you are one of my siblings, good gawd, you are some of the best people I know, and the people I most want to spend time with aside from my wife and kids. If you are a new friend, I am hoping we can be old friends. If you are an old friend, I hope we can renew our friendship. Maybe you are a Wiccan, or maybe you are a scientist, or maybe I have celebrated Solstice with you at Stonehenge. Those are people who I have loved being with because you have intrigued me with your love of the Earth, and the adventurous spirit in you.
If you are nuts enough to live under the same roof as me, or you have in the past, you are the ones I live for every day. You are the ones who take my breath away. You are the ones I give my every ounce of love to. I want you to know that even though I tell you every day how much I love you, I cannot tell you enough.
Happy Birthday? Happy 50? Well, it has been a good ride so far, and I am happy to try for another 50. I am grateful for every day, anyway.
Time.