Today I am 57 years old.
That looks funny– 57 is old! I’m trying to remember how I felt about people who were 57 when I was, say, 20, and I can’t. I didn’t think about 57 when I was 20.
My birthday is #5 in a string of eleven holidays, birthdays, and miscellaneous family events that string from Thanksgiving to Easter. Thanksgiving. Christmas. New Year’s. Anniversary (30th this year). My birthday. Wei’s birthday. My brother-in-law’s birthday. Valentine’s Day.
It’s still not over at Valentine’s Day, but by the time February 14 rolls around I. Am. Done. with holidays.
Part of the problem is that I’m not a very sentimental person, so having to keep finding creative ways to express my love about once a week for freaking months is a challenge.
Plus, expensive.
Where were we.
Right. Valentine’s Day, Sister-in-law’s birthday, son’s birthday, Easter. Celebrated twice (once for the western Christian side of the family and once for the Eastern Orthodox). Although frankly, we kinda dumped Easter about 15 years ago, since no one on either side of the family is religious. The only vestige of Easter that’s really left is the Greek Easter cookies, unless my mother-in-law suddenly remembers it’s Easter, which she does every few years.
Then, thank heaven, we get a whole month before my daughter’s birthday. I don’t complain about Mother’s Day, because by that time I haven’t had a gift in several months, and I start getting greedy. Which then guilts me into the Fathers Day gift.
And with that, the gift-giving, meal-making holidays are over for several months, giving me time to develop amnesia about January again.
Happy birthday 🙂
Happy birthday, Xan. Yep, holiday birthdays are a challenge. I’ve got a run of them too, culminating on my own Dec. 24th, ugh.
I turn 50 this year…I suddenly go from being a liability to insurance companies to getting a special rate because apparently overnight, I become a better/safer driver…My way of looking at turning 50 is this…90 is the new old. At 90, I will concede that I am old…until I “get” to 90, I will still think that I am a young person with wrinkles. I might be a bit slower, I might not go to the pub as much as I did when I was a kid BUT I am still the same “me” inside and I am bollocksed if someone out there is going to slap an “old” label on me until I am good and ready for one (read NEVER!)…you are only as “old” as your thought processes…some people get old. They sit in armchairs and watch soap operas and eat their microwave meals from trays on their laps and they take enormous amounts of prescription drugs because “hey…that’s what old people DO!”…good on you “old people” for keeping the status quo…you enjoy your knee trays and your suspicious side glances at “the youth of today” and your bingo and shuffleboard…I will be off doin’ my thang’ thank you VERY much! Happy birthday girl…you aren’t old. You are alive…old is for coffins and you aint there yet! I recently gave my 90 year old neighbour (who STILL refuses to be “old”) a card that had a picture of a feisty old lady in leathers on a motorbike for her birthday…it said “Drive it like you stole it!”…I offer you the very same birthday sentiments…
I treasure my age. My mother never got to be old. Every year I live past 54 (my mother’s age when she died) is a gift. I don’t at all reject the word old– it’s a gift and privilege. I believe that everyone has an age that they shine in, and I’ve always believed that I was born to be a Crone, but in the ancient honored sense of a woman past her youthful value of labor and childrearing. I am happy to be old.
I only reject “Old” in the societal sense. “Old” in today’s society means invisible. In my eyes “Old” is a privilage of wisdom, understanding and rite of passage. Glad next door (our 90 year old neighbour) has a spark of life inside her that is tangible. I am sorry if you misinterpreted what I meant and I realise that would have been easy to do because of the way that I wrote it. My own mother died last year much earlier than she should have. I, too, believe that I was born to revel in my old age…indeed I have only just started learning about life in earnest in my recent years and can’t believe how wasted the first 35 years of my life were. Again, I appologise if you misconstrued my words. I was firing off a tirade at societies view of the elderly and how they are placed in a basket of burden when indeed, they us all. We should be treasuring our aged and we should be giving them the position of deference that they are due rather than the way that they are treated today. What I was trying to say is that “Old” is a word with unacceptable connetations so I refuse to be slathered with societies portrayal of old. I come from a long line of oldies and hopefully, I will be afforded a long life but much like my fiesty elderly relatives, I won’t be giving in to feeling like I have to go into that dark night feeling subserviant or being “still” because someone younger than me thinks that I should be.
♥
Right back atcha Xan 🙂 I was a bit worried that you would think I was ageist! I most certainly am NOT. I want to return to the community based system of valuing the aged and their collective wisdom. I recently read a book by Harriet Fasenfest where she had been cataloguing recipes and frugal/thrify processes passed down from mother to daughter in a group of older women. The processes were being lost and we can’t afford to lose the valuable wisdom that these women held in their collective hands. I find it incredibly ironic that there is an inevitable end to all things but its only we humans that try as hard as we can to buck the system. I, for one, am proud of my wrinkles. I got them from working hard out in the sun. From growing food and from creating something out of nothing and every wrinkle is a badge to remind me that I did something with my life. My viralence was aimed at what is effectively a culture of complete denial where the aged are treated like deaf children and given very little worth. Bollocks to that! My 30 year old son recently said (with a sigh mind you 😉 ) “you are going to outlive me mum…” That’s what life is about…scraping the maximum deliciousness out of what we have been handed, no matter what that is…finding a centre for your universe and working it till it lies down for that final sleep in complete and utter certaintly that you have done your all. Thank you for understanding :). I respect you immensely and would have been very disconcerted should you not have understood my meaning there… 🙂