XXXI

STIPIMM: “Birthday,” by the Beatles

Someday, my biographer will begin his work thus:

“[The Boy] was born on October 13, 1974, at 3:10 in the morning at St. Francis Hospital in Lynwood, California. His parents were the 21-year-old Beverly Marie (nee Holder) and 25-year-old Michael Lewis McKenzie, a student at an L.A.-area junior college. The doctor’s recorded remarks after the birth note that although the child was delivered breech, he emerged from the womb with eyes open and lucid, calmly taking in the scene with a natural wisdom, while the nurses gasped at the disproportionately large size of his penis.”

Birthdays begin just like any other days. Lying in bed, looking up at the ceiling illuminated by morning sunlight, there’s that moment of solitude. Your partner is asleep next to you, your body not quite ready to move. It’s usually a nice moment, as it was today, punctuated by the recognition that, despite all the relationships and emotional connections you may have in your life, that you are still a single person. One mind. Not alone, yet pleasantly alone.

Today, as with other birthdays, the moment was different in that I was very aware of my age. And not in a creaky-bones, I’m-getting-old kind of way. Just a realization of what it means to be 31 and what it doesn’t mean.

Ever since I became an adult, I’ve sometimes compared my life to those of my parents, especially my father, noting what he was doing in his life when he was my age. Upon turning 31, I have now passed the age of my father when my brothers were born in 1980. As a 31-year-old, he had three children; I quake at the thought of just one. What’s more significant is that this is the first time that I am at an age that I actually remember my father being. That is to say, my first clear, long-term memories are from the time when my father was 30 to 31 years old. Now, thinking back to how I saw my father then, and what place he had in my life, it is almost as though I’m looking at myself, but through very different eyes. It is, to say the least, a strange feeling.

I love having a birthday; age is just a footnote for one of my favorite days of the year. I take celebrating my friends’ birthdays very seriously, because I know how important mine is to me. I hope I always will enjoy it as much as I do now, as much as I ever have.

Because Bridget has a tech run for “Brecht on Brecht” tonight, we celebrated my birthday last night. She made me fettucini alfredo with Italian bread, followed up by a birthday cake, yellow with chocolate frosting. Yum! Then we topped it off by sitting down to watch my favorite movie, “Dr. Strangelove.” Seeing that movie always reminds me why I got into films in the first place.

This morning, after my moment of solitude, my true love brought me breakfast in bed. I took the opportunity to reread something Bridget had written for me in a card the previous evening – a lovely poem, for me:

        I wake in the morning and begin to crave him
        The emptiness begins on my left
                and slowly burrows through me
        Sometimes he’s kind enough to leave
                a faint smell of him behind
        It is both splendid and cruel

        At noon I begin to forget who I am
        My left side still aches with his absence
        I tell myself… 11 hours to boy
        I don’t know if the counting helps much

The moment of solitude, punctuated by an overwhelming sense of love.