16 August 2010

I get up each morning and dust off my wits,
I open the papers and read the obits
If I’m not there, I know I’m not dead
Then I eat a good breakfast and go back to bed!!

It has been my birthday, and though these days (metaphorically) birthdays are less significant events than they were before, birthdays are nonetheless significant. My birthday calls me back to the moments when birthdays were important occasions—when growing older was too slow a process and aging not even a consideration. When gifts and parties signified my presence and the concern of others. And I was so much older then . . .

I have today been remembered by the important people in my life, and even by those who I wouldn’t have recognized as recognizing me. It will be a somewhat quiet, solitary but contented evening. Tomorrow I will happily return to the writing and the diurnal having lived for at least today in the special ether of my birthday.