Born day

“The longer I live, the more deeply I learn that love—whether we call it friendship or family or romance—is the work of mirroring and magnifying each other’s light.” —James Baldwin

Birthdays are moody bitches, aren’t they? Every year, the same haunted melancholy. Why is that? 

Maybe it’s only that I’m awake in the dark at 2 a.m. on my birthday. I’m tapping this out on my phone, my man snoring softly beside me. I’m going to lunch later with four moms I know from my son’s middle school years. We’ve reconnected more intentionally recently, women of a certain age and stage, finding comfort in friends who knew us when. When they hatched the lunch plan I said yes and didn’t mention it was my birthday. It occurs to me that the moms I’m close to from my girl’s middle school years all know it’s my birthday and will be texting me with many emojis later. Yet we’re all so busy doing our separate lives these days, with new grandchildren, or increasingly frail elders, one still isolating because of Covid, another immersed in her art, and me in the tunnel channeling stories beside the big window. Just a difference in timing and maybe also school cultures perhaps. My son’s middle school was uniformed and traditionally structured, while my daughter’s was progressive and artsy-activist. Maybe one culture attracts planners and the other tends more to spontaneous pot lucks in the park in the rain. I appreciate both ways of being in community, though I miss seeing some of my friends. The Covid years seemed to pull the women I met through my son’s school closer together and spin the women from my daughter’s school further apart. Relationships go through cycles, I suppose, but love stays. You only miss the people you love. 

Then in the evening my kids are all coming over for cake and the now traditional birthday tequila shots. I’ll be better by then. 

Thoughts on waking: Never ruminate out loud in the depths of night. You will only embarrass yourself with navel gazing. Good morning! One more year.