It's a cold yet sunny morning in late February and I am stuck on a project. Can't get my creative juices flowing and when that happens I write. I do that to get my brain focused and percolating. That's something I haven't felt much of this week. Hmmm, I could blame it on the cold. While we haven't had as many "snow" days as last winter we have had more "cold" days where the temperature and wind chill numbers were too nasty and dangerous for kids that need to wait on buses or push their way through high snow piles frozen nearly solid.
I look at the calendar and see that we are almost at the end of the month and that when I flip the calendar I see it.... my birthday. Ah ha! Now I get it. The slight depression, the lethargy, the feeling that I am adrift....
COME ON, you say, IT'S JUST A BIRTHDAY! IT'S JUST A NUMBER, you say.... Nope, that is not it. I don't really care what the number is. No, really.
This feeling of being adrift from the nuclear family I was raised in could be at the center. That may be the root of these feelings. It's another year farther from that time. The period of my life when I could pick up the phone and be in contact with my loved ones. I mean, geez, that sounds rather dramatic, doesn't it? What I mean to say is....I have lost people, as we all have, and I miss them very much...in a nutshell. Those people helped define my past and helped shape me into the person I am today. My birthday is my yearly milestone of time passing.
There's nothing to mark it.... I mean not like a major holiday. A birthday is your own moment. You wake up on your "day" and you feel....something. Most of the population wakes up and it's Monday. You walk out of your house and you may feel like there is a cloud around you...a cloud that announces to the world..."hey, today's a special day for me.." However, the Monday folks are going about their lives and there is nothing to celebrate. For the majority of the population it's an UN-BIRTHDAY, if you will.
Curious about how the rest of the world deals with birthdays? Take a look here.
Okay...so let's recap.... It may appear that I expect a party when I leave my door on March 2nd. Right? Is that what you are gleaning from my rambling thus far?
Sorry, it was a misdirect. What is really happening here is this. I miss people. On this one day of the year, I keenly feel the passage of time. More so than a major holiday when there are so many things to do....cook, clean, plan....
For the last ten years, or so, I have offered a gathering at my house. A winter celebration using my birthday as the marker. I started it when I was divorced and cut off from the "family" I thought I had. I turned to my family of friends and my nuclear family to remind myself that I was not alone. What I wanted, for my birthday, was to be surrounded by my friends, my family.... To not feel alone.
There, I knew if I wrote long enough, the truth would be outed.
My father has been gone from this earth since 2006, my mother since 2009. My friend, Kim, has been gone since 2010 along with my friend, Jay, in 2013 and my friend Ken in 2014. Every year I age...they do not. Strange thought, that.
I wonder how older people feel. The really old ones that live long, long lives. People like Alice Herz-Sommer who lived to be 110. She outlived most members of her family including her only child, her son Raphael. How did she feel on her birthdays, I wonder?
So now I have to decide, as we all decide, how I will move forward. How do I carry all those memories, those longings, the grief of not seeing those faces anymore...? Or maybe I should see it differently. Maybe it is the one day of the year that I allow all that to come bubbling to the surface. I allow all those feelings to remind me that I am still on the earth and that I still have the opportunity to build memories in someone else's heart. I am not alone when I allow those people to come to mind. I know that they are in my heart to access anytime I wish.
This will take a little thought.
Until I have fished through all those feelings I will not feel like I have celebrated another year lived, another year gone on the calendar.
I think that may be why I miss my childhood birthdays so much. Things were a lot simpler then, right?
Ahhh, the trials of adulthood.
I have nothing deep or profound to share to end this all. Only this small realization......I will strive to allow myself to feel all those memories and ghosts on my "day" and maybe allow myself a moment to thank them all for what they have given me. The good and the bad.
I am the sum total.
And I need to remind myself.......I am enough.
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