No time for a proper post, as a four-day weekend frolicking in NYC means I get to spend my actual birthday catching up on all the grading and committee work I neglected during those days. As for moving definitively into my late thirties, I Have Thoughts About That--but for the most part, I'm just happy to be here.
Since my teens, I've always been expecting my death. Not in a dramatic or anxious or depressive way; just in the fatalistic certitude that this would be the plane to crash, or I'd never live to complete X project. Though this conviction is always with me, it seems to strengthen in proportion to how invested I am in completing X--and so it was that Thursday night saw me contemplating leaving written instructions as to the location and state of my book manuscript files. In the end, though, the logic puzzle of what clothes to pack was too preoccupying and I never got around to it. Astonishingly, both my flights took off and landed without incident, and here I am.
I may be less sanguine about aging than I used to be, but it's sure better than the alternative.
15 comments:
Happy birthday! I have a sister who is 10 years younger than me, and every time I hear about her very dramatic life, I think, "oh god... I am glad I'm not 27 any more." Getting older has its benefits, for sure. :)
How is it possible that you look today exactly as you did when you were--what is that, 2? Uncanny. Happiest of birthdays. I think it keeps getting better as you keep getting older. Though, if photographs are any evidence, you won't need to think about that.
Happy Birthday! And what a cute picture! You already looked very professorial.
Happy birthday! Today is my forty-fifth. I declared that 45 is the new 35, which, as a corollary, makes you 28. Enjoy!
Happy birthday! And I echo Renaissance Girl's sentiments: you already looked like yourself even as a toddler. Although I think you have sharpened your fashion sense considerably since then.
Happy Birthday!
I hope you had fun in NYC!
Happy Birthday! And can I just say do not fear 40--so far, nearly 3 years in, 40s are the best adult decade yet by far!
Ha ha ha. I've also thought about what would happen to my book if I died.
Happy birthday!
Hey, I was in NYC this weekend celebrating my birthday too! Happy birthday!
Happy Birthday! I too was in NYC this weekend, so obviously everyone was. I'm delighted that your plane took off and landed appropriately, so no one had to worry about the ms files.
Spoken like a true Catholic. Or a true early modernist. Or both. Respice funem, as Dromio would say, and happy thirty-eight to you, dear Flavia.
Happy Birthday! You look a lot like your mother, or whoever that person is who's holding you in her lap.
I used to think that the worst thing about getting older is that I really look like my mother. But then, I really started to resemble my father, so it could be worse! (Your mother is lovely, BTW.)
38 can be some of the best years of your life.
(I know, I know. Old. Overlaps a previous joke on this comment box. Forgive me. Happy Birthday!)
Happy (belated) birthday! Here's to a productive and prolific year.
Thanks, peeps!
I'm not in the least sorry to be out of my twenties--I was delighted to turn thirty and I had no particular emotional reaction to the subsequent birthdays. I've never experienced aging in a negative way. But. . . forty does seem like a big one, and one that will require more stock-taking than I'm quite ready for.
We'll see if I'm ready once it hits.
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