So here it is. I’m 30. Just one day older than yesterday. Recently, over trough-sized margaritas at a restaurant bar, a friend said, “What if the numbering system we adopted had had an extra digit between 1 and 10. Then this year wouldn’t mean anything.” Totally arbitrary. Point taken. Another acquaintance said this: "’Day’ is a vestigial mode of time measurement based on solar cycles. It's not applicable.... I didn't get you anything.”
Life doesn’t move in decades. Ten is a number we made up to make us feel like we could explain the world around us. Life moves in its own increments – its own eras and eons – but they don’t necessarily divide out into whole numbers. There are remainders.
In general, my life has gotten better each year that I’ve lived it, I think, but every now and then, it resets and starts over. Someone cuts the power for an instant and you have to blunder around for an extended period of time with the manuals open and the toolbox out trying to figure out how to adjust the clock so everything will stop blinking “12:00” at you over and over in the dark.
My first major reset hit at about 13. I don’t think I’m alone in that one. I hit another one around 21. Nothing obscures those blinking numbers like a bottle of vodka. I hit another reset at 28, the instant the nurse plopped a wet and very confused baby on my stomach. The universe says, “Pull out the toolbox and see if you’ve got anything in there to handle this one.”
In one of my favorite books, Terry Prachett and Neil Gaiman describe the universe as such:
“God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players (i.e. everybody), to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won’t tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.”
Any limited understanding I aspire to regarding a higher power in this so-called life always comes back to this paragraph.
So here I am again, climbing the upslope and getting some good foot holds in by now. I start out repeating my little mantra that gets me through: “This will get easier.” And eventually it does and I can say, “This has gotten easier. See?” And then the slope will even out and I’ll forget the mantra and one day while I’m enjoy the sunshine and the view, Fate will sneak up behind me, snickering, and yank the rug out from underneath my feet and I’ll start over again.
I’m not bitter about it. It keeps life interesting.
So, 30. They say it’s your birthday. I would like you to dance.
No point in quibbling over arbitrary numbers. I’m still here in the fourth age, regardless of how many trips I’ve made around the sun or how many more I have to go. Shawn’s taking me out to dinner. My grandfather and my cousin sent a box of chocolates, which I’ve mostly consumed already. Calories eaten on your birthday don’t count.
Not that I count calories. Or years, really.
Turn up the stereo, have another truffle, and hang on for another orbit around the mass of incandescent gas at the center of our small and insignificant solar system. What the hell.
It’s not like all you folks are standing still. You’re all going around with me. At least I’m in good company.