Fiddling Like Sixty

 

In a day or so I will turn 60 (if I make it). I seem to recall reading somewhere that when a man turns sixty, it’s time for him to get serious. I know that age is just a number (in my case an ominously increasing number), but sixty does seem a significant milestone. Maybe it’s all down to having ten fingers, but counting life in decades feels natural.

I have three jokes I inevitably think of on my birthday. Sometimes I even attempt to tell them. The first is a bit from an old episode of The Jeffersons, which goes something like this: “One day a poor pregnant slave woman struggled into a cornfield and came out again carrying a baby (me) in her arms …” Another is of course the old wheeze I picked up from The 637 Best Things Anybody Ever Said: “If I knew I was going to live this long I would have taken better care of myself.” The third is from Ripping Yarns: “It’s … It's worse than that, nephew. Today … is my birthday. A day I’ve dreaded for years!” Humor, they say, is apotropaic, that is, designed to ward off evil.

For me, an inevitable result of an approaching birthday is a number of minor injuries. I don’t know if I just grow careless, distracted by impending anxieties, or if my brain hates me and arranges little accidents so I don’t feel too uppity. Anyway, I have my seasonal scratches and bumps (besides my major, long-lasting health problems) to remind me I am mortal. I’ve also been fed a string of dreams figuring dead people, cemeteries, long dark tunnels, and shoelessness, none of which I’ve thought about in my waking mind.

My birthday comes at the end of a long string of birthdays, holidays, and anniversaries in July, so I always feel that when we get to me everybody is kind of celebrated out, and since it’s the end of the month, running low on finances. I know I am. I am always given good birthdays with a special meal and a cake, cards and presents, but everyone is exhausted and low-key with the summer heat. Then again, I am a rather stuffy old codger that no-one associates jollity with; I probably wouldn’t know what to do with a raucous party.

Two past memorable birthdays come to mind. The first because it was so forgettable and forgotten. We were still Jehovah’s Witnesses at the time, so birthdays weren’t really celebrated, but they could at least be acknowledged as a change in age. I had gone the whole day without even thinking about it when in the middle of a late afternoon game of volleyball I suddenly blurted out in a blaze of recognition, “Hey, it’s my birthday!” Had the date passed my parents by as well, or were they hoping I wouldn’t notice? Neither alternative is very cheerful. The other birthday was a few years ago when I gave a ‘hobbit’s birthday party’ for my family. That means I gave them presents and bought the cake and the meal. I found it pleasant enough, but the experiment was never repeated.

There isn’t a single baby picture of me in the family album to illustrate my birth. Well, those were tough times. I’ve thought of writing a short story of a gathering of myself at 5, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, and 60 for a life review, but honestly I’m too tired, and not sure I could get my mind in the right space.

The day before my birthday, I never exert myself unnecessarily. I keep out of the heat, don’t go to town, don’t take on any grueling tasks (like rearranging my furniture, which perversely exercises a strange fascination at this time). I’m always careful to say “If I’m lucky” or “God willing” about any future event, especially the birthday.  I’ve always felt the strange sting of “…and he was only a few days (or hours) away from his birthday!” Let me turn 60 and then crumble into dust!

And now I won’t feel like I have to make any of these jokes, observations, grumbles, or wistful statements on the day itself. Thank God!