Today is my birthday. While not there yet, I’m inching closer to one of the big ones – fifty. Sometimes, my age catches me by surprise. In some respects, I still feel like a kid or like I’m stuck in this early adult phase of life (like I’m in my 20s or 30s)… Maybe it’s the lack of major life accomplishments – though I’ve done a lot of the adult things that people my age have done: raised a child, moved up the corporate ladder (a few times), etc. Maybe it’s because I haven’t known many nearly fifty-year-old, single men and so I’m not sure what we’re supposed to look like or do. Maybe it’s because most of my peers (and people in this country) identify themselves through their immediate family units as a husband, wife, or parent – and maybe that feels more grown up than whatever I have going on. I don’t feel like I have an adult identity.
I woke up with “Rocket Man” by Elton John playing in my head. I made a nice breakfast for myself and took the dog on a slightly longer walk. I sat on the deck and read and wrote a few poems as I drank my second cup of coffee. I came across two prose poems from Mary Oliver that stuck with me:
I, and maybe lots of people, tend to think of birthdays in much the same way I/we think of New Year’s and anniversaries. These are, or can be, times of reflection and renewal, death and rebirth. As I read and wrote in the summer morning light, I thought about how I might wish to be reborn today. I thought about the things I’ve been working towards these past few years – especially writing, reading, and becoming a kinder and more peaceful person. My goal, if one can call it a goal, is to be one of the kindest people a stranger, or friend might meet or have known. When I think about my epitaph, something that crosses my mind more frequently with each passing year, my hope is that people will have been happy to have known me – in however small a way or however our paths crossed. I’m becoming more determined to share this with friends and family and acquaintances. We don’t tell each other, nearly often enough, that they matter or how they’ve influenced us. Relationships fail and too often we focus on the failure, but… I suspect, much more good comes from them than we ever credit.
And so I spent significant parts of my birthday thinking about who and how I might yet be. I want to focus my next year or years on kindness and connection. I hope to once again love madly and appreciate laughter as I learn how best to describe the dark pines in winter, the blue jay’s midday scream, the shape and weight of the things we throw into the sea, or, as Mary Oliver says in a different poem, “the endless calamities of the personal past.” There are many days bathed in skylight blue and sunflower gold – I hope to spend more time seeing those colors, feeling those moments, and finding ways to share that wonder.