Happy birthday

At a Christmas party the night before, I mention to my nephew, the one most like me, that it is my birthday and to guess my age. He is in late elementary and has learned cunning, so he waits a thoughtful moment before pronouncing that I am probably twenty-one. No matter that his eldest sister is nineteen and I’d known her since she was in diapers, I gather him into my arms for a hug and pronounce him a good liar. It is a valuable skill that needs avuncular reinforcement. 

Last year for my birthday, angst filled my chest, exacerbated by my mental unease in general, something I’ve tamped down this year by sleeping more (ah, the delicacy of the human mind). I do not feel as panicked, as dutiful to my fear of mission out, but I am also consciously paying less attention to aging. When I notice my supervisor has wrinkles around his eyes, I am perplexed for a second, because he is younger than me by a year and I mapped my perception of him seven years ago, and never got around to updating it. 

A cake made her lips blue; she is not cold

My friends were likewise mentally photographed the moment I started caring about them and, every time I see them now, I have to remind myself that they are allowed to age. I do not know if they have to do the same thing for me, and I would rather not know the differences they see in me from the day when we first hugged. 

At some point, recently I am sure but not on this birthday, though I cannot be sure of the specifics -- I became middle-aged. I do not feel middle-aged, primarily because I have chosen to define this term as "conspicuously older than me." A middle-aged person is at least a decade my senior, someone with gray hair and wrinkles around their mouth. (My hair is still naturally dark. It is to my annoyance thinner, but it shows no sign of losing its color.) 

I have to estimate how long I am likely to live, since that is the literal definition. Into my mid-seventies is perhaps pessimistic, but not outside the realm of possibility. I have kept a blog since 2001, at which point I was, if I may be so bold, still very young, What I wrote, the concerns I demonstrated, were certainly young. His was not a poor mindset, but my middle-aged self has taken to plundering what he went through so that I may commodify it, which I am sure he would agree is a middle-aged thing to do. He made raw, tortured descriptions of the solipsistic height of his pain. I, cringing at the prose, polish it up so I can make a buck. 

Remember, you are mortal.

My grandfathers on both sides were not long-lived, relatively. On the other hand, they were big about drinking, smoking, and, if rumors are true, infidelity. They worked more arduous, more polluted jobs than my teaching and writing. Genes may not be destiny, not when we have prophylactic medication, exercise, and a higher health standards. I may live longer. Not as long as my grandmothers, necessarily. My maternal grandmother died in her early nineties and her life was not as poor as some might expect. My paternal grandmother did not live as long and, toward the end, was blighted with senile dementia. I would hate to know my brain was no longer going to work correctly and there was nothing much I could do about it. By that time this might threaten me, there might be more one can do. I don't want to invest much hope in science as I once did, when I expected a transhuman revolution would radically extend my term of consciousness, if not discover a way to make me a ghost in the machine. 

Or my middle age may have passed, quietly, and I won't ever know the anniversary of my death I neglect to celebrate every year. Because, it is certain, the anniversary does pass.

I used to be more bothered about my individual death and, while I might fight against it when confronted with a threat, I don't see the point in tainting my remaining decades worrying so much about something I cannot win against, unless Jesus is keen to make a Wandering Discordian to accompany his Wandering Jew. I can only do what I can do, and I stick by the notion that nothing much matters and I shouldn't fixate on the paths I didn't take and cannot change.

Amber planned a party for my thirty-eighth birthday, though I believe the relative largeness of the number seemed too onerous to her. She relabeled it my (30)8th, inviting our friends under this theme. It is only via a clever last-minute decision that the main course wasn’t dino nuggets and macaroni to better fit the palate of an eight-year-old. Instead, I hand make pizza, which may not in actuality exceed Ellio’s, but it makes me feel less obnoxious. I might smirk to see chicken nuggets on the menu for a party now, but only once I ascertained that there was real food to complement this fare. (What is the wine pairing for Kraft Mac and Cheese?) 

Woo?

My friends come -- too many for our living room, but no one cares to believe there is more to our apartment downstairs. (Amber is on that list, as our studio is now the cats' room and her workshop for a refurbished cage for our coming hamster; it is not a place it behooves us to acknowledge.) Sarah M. brings party hats, which we wear and put on the cats, to their vexation.

My new friend Jess brings her primary partner. I greet him, with eight-year-old's bluntness, as "very tall." I do not know what she expected of this affair, but we did not provide it. My friends watch shows from the eighties and chat while I make them food, warm and cozy. 

The presence of people in my home energizes me because I need a tribe. I warrant that, in the winter, I lack enough room to entertain, logically reducing my parties to standing in the kitchen or sitting in the living room. 

Jesse goes downstairs to the bathroom. Jess joins him. They whisper, then she comes up to tell me they have to get going. I assume this was a not precisely her speed, though I do not know her well enough to guess which aspect shortened her stay. It was crowded for the space and, but don't of assigning myself food-making duties, my contribution to the festivities becomes interruptions to tell some trivial gems about the He-Man and She-Ra Christmas Special. However, it cannot be much helped. 

I joke that I will gossip about them for being the first to leave. I'm not sure the partook of any of the refreshments, though they left a wine bottle large beer. 

We lower the lights and I blow out eight candles on a cake. It is a fine birthday, and I will persist in ignoring what it is meant to signify. 

Soon in Xenology: A new year.

last watched: The Umbrella Academy
reading: The Art of Asking
listening: Starkids