The birthday blues are too obvious, an emotional cliche as lamentably predictable as Christmas cheer and Valentine’s self-pity.
Too bad. I’ve got those jangly, moaning blues, just a little bit, for tomorrow I smash head-on into one of those big, hairy birthdays, the kind with horns and tusks that makes you spin yet makes friends and family giggle.
I’m getting older when I specifically asked the calendar to cease and desist from advancing. It’s disgusting. But I can do this.
Plans for the Big Day? Hilarious. A good friend scheduled his wedding for tomorrow, so I’ll be spending a chunk of my time celebrating someone else’s milestone. That should keep my mind off things. Pass the Champagne.
(Truth be told, I haven’t actually “celebrated” — party, gathering, friends — my birthday since I turned 13. The attention mortifies me.)
Spiffy (or is it scratchy and twitchy?) in suit and tie from the nuptials, I will then be taken to a suave dinner at Tom Colicchio’s swanky Temple Court in the Beekman Hotel in Lower Manhattan, courtesy of my swell brother, who is also attending the marital event. (Kudos, Jeff and Debbie!)
Do birthdays really change anything? Will I wake up tomorrow with a jungly, gray Moses beard? Will my insistent lower-back ache go into sudden overdrive? Will the pain in my left hand morph into full-blown grandpa arthritis? Will my ambivalent outlook on life, a fraught shade of charcoal-gray, turn black, black, black?
On all counts, I think not. Tomorrow, April 7, will be an overcast Saturday, breezy and easy, featuring a soiree that I don’t even have to throw — I’ll pretend it’s my birthday party — a day in New York, and a dinner sure to stagger.
The calendar pages flip. It happened one year ago, no big deal. It happened the year before that, ditto. A dear friend said not to worry, I have scores more years to go. I’m not sure that’s the best news — I’m really not digging visions of me in my nineties.
I fear aging, not dying. One will beat the other; it’s a race to the finish. My birthday is just another lap.
GNASHING. 