On the Eve of my 37th Birthday

On the Eve of my 37th Birthday

I have spent at least eleven birthdays in this town, a sprawl not yet suburban, but far from urban, a sprawl which I have been unable to call home. I recognize the socialization of birthdays. The fostering of yearly reflection and future predictions, the encouraging of wishes and sweets and celebrations as one moves forcibly from one social signifier to another. I intellectualize them .. question their value –but they still arrive and full of expectation. They become landmarks, bookmarks to my life history, and so as I edge closer to the most recent one, some summaries.

My 24th birthday .. I do not recall. It is a life time ago, spent (my raison d’etre for moving here), with a man whose furried features faded years ago as left world of music for that of the military. Maybe we went to dinner or ordered pizza. I don’t really remember much of what we did do.. talk about.. laugh about.. have in common with the exception of a college in Wisconsin, where we met. He was a person who used his hands, less to make an impression, but more so for expression. A drummer/percussionist he channeled love and lust through his hands into tables, and vibraphones, and snare. When not percussing he was sanding or building. He sanded a door into table, and a pure-walnut dresser we bought for 20 bucks at a garage sale in Cleveland, OH into a piece of art. It still sleeps here, home to t-shirts given to me but rarely worn, and wool sweaters that make me itch. Shortly after my first birthday here , he moved out ,moved in with someone else married that person and changed his rhythm for that of the drum to that of step, and entered the military.

My 25th birthday, I spent back at my parents house in North Chicago, inviting friends, from childhood to college to Cleveland (almost all men, I think) in a dire attempt to keep what us and to (unlike my life now) ensure safety? Security? For the future? I wore a blue Esprit dress that I wore for three summers beyond, until my body shape shifted and I and it looked out of date and out of style. I do recall the love/lust of my late college life coming and with it tension. Tension because my parents life and living was most antithetical to his own, middle class and activist world. But his hair was long and lighten by the sun and though we still at this point had not kissed nor consummated nor even talked about the breath of tension between our bodies, I took pictures of him and placed them page one of that year’s album.

My 26th is blurry. .Maybe Minneapolis? Maybe a conference for graduate school.
I know no love was on the horizon. And thus the birthday was not memorable

My 27th birthday was Connecticut.. I was performing at national event and thriving. My life on the brink of monumental change beyond my understanding and capabilities .. slowly sank. The love of the 25th came to see me.. nervous, require perfection I faltered. Yet through this failure we finally in a hotel room full of others –followed our instincts and it forever altered our friendship. Falters, failure to perform for the sake of performing vs. its potential outcomes, and the death of my great aunt, the loneliest person I knew in my life-marked that day. She did not die alone-my brother cared for her- and knowing no on would assist-she saved and saved for her funeral and thus buried herself. She was one upon seeing you –hug you so . hard, so tight, that what was given as love was often taken as discomfort. I understand loving like that—its pain and pleasure, hold and release.

My 28 was orchestrated by me. .a birthday party, with a Hello Kitty theme; my inability to leave the childhood and move into adulthood. A sock puppet, some local friends long gone, and a subtext of stagnancy and sadness

My 29th is without memory. No love on the horizon, a recognition of my last year in one decade and move into another appears forgotten.

My 30th felt like sun, looked like sun but was darkness in disguise. A blonde, beach and tanned man had made an appearance in my life where he talked of trips and travels and a life time of togetherness. We were ‘geographically desirable’ as he would say. I lived down the block from him, much better than his last girlfriend who lived 30 minutes away and the last one before that on the other side of the state. I decided to have a party at his house because he head a beach volleyball net in his backyard and he well had a backyard. He however barely made it – he was at a beach volleyball tournament, and a friend of his named Lanky became the host. This party was several months before Lanky was arrested and sent to prison on sexual assault of a minor? This was the party where my dad, perhaps prophetically, sent me a card with two cats that read,
“ I will love you my whole life”. This my last birthday card from my dad and his last August on earth. It was also the only one that the blonde beach boy and I shared before betrayal, and a move westward without me.

Birthdays 31-35 could’ve been tumultuous, or celebratory but I have little recollection. My movement into 30’s was full of self-doubt, disgust, pity and sadness. How did I end up here? What was my mom doing at this age? What /where am I ? I’d look at my peers, near and far and their lives much which seemed more full of certainty or least foundation.

I live away from my mother which has become increasingly challenging, stupid and almost incorrigible. I lost a parent and thus all hope of possibility of what that relationship still needed/ should be. The loss of another parent before I have given her more time, before we could go to lunch in the middle of the day during the week, before maybe even a grandchild (not a grand-cat) to call her own-is selfish. My 35th was particularly painful. I was dating someone 12 years younger than I and unsatisfied in every-which way. I was becoming the same age as my mom was when she remarried. And my body was yelling at me on a daily basis not allowing me to eat or to pass anything. I was just stuck. In time. In my body. In my sadness.

So.. 36th.. as full of hope and light as the birthdays parties of young. Parties where we played penny on the shoe and that to be successful (that is to walk across the lawn without the penny falling off ) one had to remain focused not on the finish line but on the present. My birthday present here—was the presence of being. Present with someone who made me feel..again. And on this birthdays, someone who calls himself dark, but to me was full of light emerged. He asked to take me out. .and picked the restaurant, telling me as we were seating that he had never actually been on a date before. He of course, had . had girlfriends but had never been out on a date. Someone’s first. Another gift. Somebody’s desire. Still.. another gift. He might tell the story other ways and temper its significance. But it was my birthday and fueled feelings of hope that my subsequent birthdays would be spent surrounded in love. I was wrong. The birthday did begin a months and months of first dates. .new adventures, new dishes and even some new dreams.
I could close my eyes and see us in years to come. I had sleeping dreams of a child named Talia or Tia.

I grew up where the birthday was an event to be celebrated and cherished particularly for children. The why of the party was never questioned but the how was deeply thought over. Lists of kids were crafted, ideas conceptualized and goody bags created. I am not blaming my upbringing for the sentiment and significance I prescribe (though deny) to birthdays, but they are often a burden. A reminder of what was, what is and what is not.

And on the eve of this one, I am thankful for the sun, but mindful that it will soon become gray. I am most definitely older, not very wise, most unclear of where to go, grateful to be living and employed, disappointed in myself and my lack of correspondence with a 15 year old brother who lives not but 3 hours away, thankful my cats are well, as well as my mom, brother and step-dad and coming to terms with my father’s prophecy of my life that I, like him, am just more likely to live life alone.