Happy Birthday, Me

It is my birthday today. Right now as I’m typing this. Happy birthday, me.

45 years ago, I burst forth into this beautiful and terrifying world. I did this with lots of help from Mom and Dad. From doctors. From other people. We never do anything on our own.

Mom always called to wish me a happy birthday. She would tell me the story of my birth. It was a c-section. I was born in an amniotic sac. A quick Google search tells me 1 in 80,000 babies are born this way. A veiled birth. I guess I really am, as my mother told me, special. I know all of us really are, as our mothers should tell us, special.

Mom died in 2015, so she doesn’t call me anymore. But she’s here with me on my birthday all the same. There’s no getting away from ghosts.

***

I don’t want anything for my 45th birthday.

That’s not entirely right. I want a hot cup of coffee. I want to go for a run. I want to play video games, strum the guitar, and read. I want to be with Katie, Solomon, and Samson. I want to relax. I’ll get all of those things. Happy birthday, me.

I don’t feel older this morning. If anything, I feel younger.

I’ve been feeling younger lately. I don’t know why. Dashing around the basketball court. Learning to play Neil Young songs on the guitar. Walking around Iowa City. Writing books and poems. Performing in improv shows. Laughing with my boys. Snuggling with my wife. There’s lots of energy in me right now. I’m not sure how or why. I’m not sure where that energy will go or how long it will last, but I feel younger all the same.

A few lines from Neil Young come to me. Because Neil’s music is a ghost I can’t get away from.

I keep getting younger, my life’s been funny that way, before I ever learned to talk, I forgot what to say or people my age, they don’t do the things I do. They go somewhere, while I run away with you.

Neil’s words capture something of how I feel on my 45th birthday. At least for now. Who knows how I will feel next. There is no knowing what is next.

***

At first, I didn’t like the picture at this top of this blog. Solomon and I standing together at his 5th grade graduation ceremony in the gym at Horace Mann Elementary in Iowa City. My sideburns are gray. There are wrinkles at the corner of my eyes. I am not as slender as I remember myself. Not as tall as I pretend I am. Not as muscular. Not as Brad-Pitt-ish.

But then I laugh at myself. There is a real smile on my face. The headphones that have been singing to me all year wrap around my neck. My son who I could not be more proud of – I’m proud of both of my sons – stands beside me. There are worse looking 45-year-olds, I’m sure. And there are better ones as well. And I know that it makes no sense to compare myself to others. To compare myself to mythologies inside of me. There is no point in diminishing my difference. There is vitality in affirming my difference. There is life in giving up deception. It is 2025, I am 45, and that picture is me for the moment. And then it won’t be.

I keep stepping out of my amniotic sac, getting closer to my world, and making my way forward safe in the knowledge that I have no idea what happens next. It is okay, it isn’t okay, and that’s okay.

Okay.