Hung One More Year on the Line

Today is my birthday. I mention this because family and friends (you might assume they are one and the same, in a very small number and somewhat reluctant to be considered either. You may also kiss my grits) have congratulated me which is something we all do on birthdays but I've always felt we do it to the wrong person.

I always thanked my Mom when she called, and she always did, referring to her as 'without whom none of this would be possible' because she really was, together with my dad, the person who made it all possible. I didn't have a plan then and I still don't have a clue. I'm not yet used to the idea that she will not be calling, not just this year again but ever again but I suppose I have the rest of my life to get used to it.. 

I am one of six and the first draft of a child so to speak. Each of us has run pretty much the same race, if on different courses and in different circumstances than those our parents had, and their parents before them.

I traveled halfway across the earth a lifetime ago and found someone who loves me to this day despite myself, which is leichter gesagt als getan (believe me). We have two beautiful children who are themselves, adults, though one of their parents tends to forget that, a lot (and it's not their mother).

When I was a child, I desperately wanted to be a grown-up. I hurried through childhood as if there were a prize somewhere for being first without ever knowing what first felt like or why it was so important. It wasn't, and it never will be, and I've only recently discovered that which would have been very useful to that little boy of eight standing in the big backyard on Bloomfield Avenue in Somerset, NJ. Too late smart, nothing new there.

It's taken me all this time and all those years to realize just how much I don't know and to accept that the list of things I will never know continues to expand exponentially into infinity. I could waste what's left of my life yearning for what can never be or be gracefully grateful for that which I have. The latter feels like a good choice at this point.

"It takes a long time to grow young," said Picasso and none of us have as long a time left as we think or hope. But it's what we do with what we have that defines us and how we live and who we love. Happy birthday to me. says the calendar but happy birthday to you as well, be it today or whenever it is.

-bill kenny