I have an insignificant birthday today. They come around faster now and stealthily as a fox. A sign of getting older, they say.
So it’s probably time I decided what to do when I grow up: - assume a role, be somebody/something, find a passion which would mean never having to work for the rest of my life. Any day now.
Perhaps.
To date, I have had as many minor passions as insignificant birthdays, leading to suggestions I never worked a day yet. Some overwhelming passions too. Lots of work there, though it never seemed so.
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Through it all, any intimations have been of immortality more than mortality, as though this life would go on forever, with little urgency towards reflection on what I might do when I grow up.
It has also meant less pressure to ponder those ultimate questions, as “to be or not to be?”, whatever the slings and arrows, the heartaches, the thousand natural shocks.
Pointless, it seemed, while still being here.
Beloved companions were lost along the way. Where be their quips now? Their songs, their flashes of merriment “wont to set a table on a roar”? Family members gone too. All now in that undiscovered country from which no traveller returns.
Insignificant birthdays, also, bring that country closer. So be it. What will be, will be. The pale cast of thought won’t change that.
No rush there, either, and no fear of what may lie beyond. Maybe a nervousness about some approach routes: pain, the loss of independence, of dignity, a possible and dreaded absence of memory. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. Or not.
For now, the steady pace of life rolls on, insignificant birthday to insignificant birthday. Significant ones too.
On this day I remember my mother and how, on her 89th birthday, she sang us “happy birthday to me”. She lived a further two years. Born on the 24th too, though of August.
And another 24th “baby” is our latest addition, Paddy, born on July 24th last year. Those three generations.
Yes, it is true, the best McGarrys were born on the 24th but, whatever you say, say nothing. It could prompt those less privileged McGarrys to thoughts on making this insignifant birthday my last.
May the 24th be with you.
Birthday, from Old English byrddæg, for anniversary or celebration of one’s birth.
