Celebrate Yourself

Birthdays

“Our birthdays are feathers in the broad wings of time.”

Jean Paul Richter

          I have a birthday coming up this Labor Day weekend—my 76^th. Whew! That’s a lot of candles to blow out! Reminds me of a quote by Catherine Pulsifer, “When the candles on your cake burn down before they are all lit you know you’re getting up there.” Oh, yeah, that’s true enough. But I am here to tell you, if you make it to this age, and you’ve done your psychological work, it’s just about the best time of life. I’m in agreement with Rachel Maddow who said, “My life is better with every year of living it.”

          Here’s a birthday celebration I had six years ago—one that stands out in my mind as singular. I went to Lake Martin with my women friends, and they created this cake for me that was a life review in icing. Ann Wade and Susan Blackshear made it. I’ve never seen a tableau so personal and accurate. I think it stands in sharp contrast to other birthdays because this sort of celebration of me has almost never happened. I don’t say that as a “poor pitiful me” remark; it hasn’t happened because I’ve never allowed it. But these days, birthdays are truly a cause for celebration. More and more I realize that every birthday is a gift; and in fact, every day is a gift.

          Most people, myself included, complain about their aches and pains—they are a real part of aging, too. But despite them, life is good because we are good. As we age—if we do the personal work, and I can’t stress that enough—we grow into ourselves as whole human beings. As my friend David says, “We regrow our feathers,” and learn how to fly again. As children, we knew by instinct how to spread our wings and fly, but as life brought its inevitable wounds, we forgot. We forgot that the small stuff doesn’t matter, and that we are stronger than we think. We can take the slings and arrows of loss and grief and come back from them. We can bend and not break—and all the other cliché things we say about enduring. They are all true.

          I know people who despair when another birthday approaches—I’m not one of them. I rejoice that I have survived another year by grace alone. By grace, and by friends and family who love me. There is no bigger stuff than that. It’s everything.

                                                  In the Spirit,

                                                  Jane