Signs of getting older #13: so this is what mom was talking about…

Today is my 56th birthday. I’m writing this late at night so I probably should rephrase that to read “yesterday was” but I’m getting to that point in life where there’s a lot more writ on side of things done than the side of may yet be. So, let’s just keep it in the present for now.

So far the year hasn’t been exactly stellar. For one reason or another there are a lot of steps in the past that have led me to this place and, like a cat, I’m looking around the inside of the bag wondering exactly where it is I’ve got.

This may seem a bit morose for musings on a birthday, but after a few years the novelty of baked goods with sticky goop and fire on top does wear a little thin (even with the promise of foil wrapped coins carefully deposited inside). On the other hand, I never want to be so old that I don’t care at all about cake, ice cream and presents.

The thing is I was raised in an atmosphere where birthdays were something to be got past. My mom never liked them, her own definitely but also those of my sister and mine once we got passed that age where we were no longer children. In mom’s eyes that was sometime around my 8th birthday.

Even when she was much younger than I am now she dreaded the approach of any reminder she’d made one more trip around the sun. As she got older, it became more intense. Eventually the entire month of April was just the worst month on the calendar. Nothing good ever happened in April, it was always cold, always raining and the sun never shone once. February and March were little more than warm up acts of dread for the month of April.

Even when she came out to visit us on the west coast, where spring happens with a trumpet call sometime around mid-February and the flurry of blooming, greening and growing things doesn’t slow down until mid-October, in her mind if it was April, it was crap.

As I meditate on my 56th year, my left leg is being kept elevated. Some wee critter that lives happily on everybody’s skin managed to find a way underneath mine and held a huge party. It’s taken 6 days of IV anti-biotics and now a further round of horse pills 4 times a day to reach a point where my foot no longer looks like an illustration from The Good Earth.

I bring this up to point out maybe there is something to this not being thrilled when another birthday rolls around. While this is one of those things that can happen at any age, it seems to wait until we’ve been softened up a bit by a couple or 5 decades of getting rode hard and put away wet.  On the other hand, it never happened to my mom, although if it did she would insist it started in April.

She felt it was a good policy to always be prepared to be disappointed.  Perhaps that has something to do with being raised during the Depression followed by dating when the world was at war. At least one of her beau’s stood her up on a Saturday night because he’d been permanently killed in a training accident.  He must have been very special to her because, along with the several pictures of Dad in his uniform from those days, there was almost an equal number of this one pilot…

Where is this going? Well, even though I am grounded and not getting to go on my annual pilgrimage to the Propeller Head conference in Ottawa that is PodCasters Across Borders (2011) because I would be drawing to an inside straight on a deep vein thrombosis, I guess I am trying to say I’m not going to blame it on my birthday. Or on June or anything else.

Mom may have been right in warning me that life is a continual girding of the loins for one losing battle or another. But she missed out on one thing. Just because it’s a fight, doesn’t mean we have to be miserable while girding up for the next round.

She spent a lot of time bracing herself for every round like it was going to be the final showdown. I’m going to use that experience to make sure I enjoy every round right up to that last one and I’m counting on there being a lot more left to go through. Even when it does come around, I’m hoping I can go with a smile on my face because I managed to steal a little icing when no-one was looking.

"I like a man who grins when he fights"