On Tuesday, I turn 50.
I have a complicated relationship with birthdays. We weren’t a family of celebrations, and when we did, they came with rules and disappointment. It isn’t that rules aren’t important, they are, although I’m not sure they coexist well with celebrations. S has very few rules, which means she spends a lot of energy negotiating and pushing at our attempts to incorporate them.
Rules communicate what’s valued about a family. I’ll be the first to admit that rules aren’t always positive, and clearly some rules are more important than others like not driving the wrong way down a one-way street, and maybe instead of rules, I’m really talking about structure and control. S likes structure. She likes the meal list on the refrigerator, she likes her bedtime routine, she likes her morning buns, the cinnamon and sugar on her fingers.
I lived under control, so rules existed even for holidays. On Christmas Day, we couldn’t wake our parents until after 7, we were only allowed to look at what was in our stockings until my parents were ready – my mother with pen and paper documenting the ugly sweater and drugstore perfume from relatives so thank you notes could be written. In the middle of opening Santa’s gifts, someone had most likely been threatened with punishment, and someone else was in tears by the time the Pillsbury cinnamon rolls had been sliced and put in the oven.
Birthdays weren’t much different. Parties were for milestones, although I don’t ever remember having a party as a child. To be fair, there is a photograph from when I turned 5, and when I turned 13, my parents took me to Patsy Clark’s Mansion for an expensive dinner. Otherwise, my birthday usually came and went with little fanfare. Not a lot has changed since childhood. It’s 16 days after Christmas, it’s always cold, someone is usually sick, we’re burnt from the Big Three, Z is mired in work, I’m procrastinating spring semester planning, and my birthday marks the start of another Big Three: Z in February and S in March. We just about get it together for S, although 2020 sticks out as awful. We don’t mention black bean soup.
Each year, Z asks what I want to do, what I want. When I was a kid, I asked for whatever I didn’t get for Christmas, a particular benefit of an after-Christmas birthday. But for 24 years, Z has always gotten Christmas presents just right. So I usually say nothing, or something simple, like a particular book, or maybe a nice dinner out. Nothing too complicated, nothing too big, nothing that inconveniences anyone. A particular way I’ve always operated in life. Keep your head down, follow the rules, don’t be too loud or take up too much space, don’t make waves. Don’t be an inconvenience. But each year as I get older, I realize that those are someone else’s rules.
Some say you pick the parents you’re born to, and I joke that I must make terrible decisions, but if I’m honest, my parents gave me a strong set of values. Z knows that if I say I’ll do something, I mean it. It doesn’t matter what I have to move around, S knows I’ll be there for the curriculum celebration, the soccer game, the appointments. I have a small circle of friends who know that if they need me, they only need to ask. Frequently S thanks us for being her parents, and I’ll say, “Well you picked us.” It doesn’t mean we don’t butt heads. She’s thirteen, an odd mix of loving and hating us all at once. She has the best of us and the worst of us. She’s stubborn and controlling (me). She’s mean and holds a grudge (Z), but she’s passionate and loving and fucking funny. And I think what happens as I get older is I realize she gets older too, and there’s nothing more frightening than your preemie sleeping on your chest one day and heading off to 8th grade the next. It goes frighteningly fast, reminding me so insensitively of my own mortality. Not being alive is a reoccurring panic I have late at night curled into Z’s back.
The women in my family live a long time, and I joke it’s because they’re like beef jerky, hard and weathered, not from loss or heartbreak or hard lives, harder than anyone else’s I mean. My grandmother Curtner grew up during the Depression, married, had a child, divorced, married my grandfather, a tight-fisted distant man, who was a wonderful grandfather who I loved very much, but was a terrible husband and father. When I knew her, she raised Norwegian Elkhounds, and all conversation revolved around those dogs. So I learned to ask about her dogs, and I showed them for her, a conformation. It was the way I could be close to her because I’m not sure she knew how to be close to anyone, which afflicts my mother too, I think. And all any of us women wanted was to have our mothers think we were smart, and beautiful, and talented, and important, which didn’t happen, or wasn’t the way we remembered it. And this rejection, or indifference, or just perhaps inability teaches you early on to guard who you are, the things you really care about so no one can hurt you, no one can wound those soft parts. But then you can’t love the way love needs to love.
I’ve been really blessed. Z and I have been together since I was 25, and sometimes it's hard to remember what it was like to be 25, who I was at 25. I know he is the love of my life, and each day I’m with him, he makes me a better person. I tell S, marry someone who makes you better, has those traits you don’t, someone who changes in the same directions you do, is your ride or die.
On Tuesday, I turn 50, and it will be quiet because it’s hard to change what shapes you in your formative years, that perhaps you aren’t someone who’s important enough to be celebrated. I’m not sure what 50 is supposed to feel like, but it’s hard not to think about what’s still left to accomplish, what is still to come. I’ve always lived life with no regrets. There isn’t one choice I’ve made in my life I would change, even the bad stuff, because even a small change would erase those really beautiful, character defining moments of my life.
When I was 25, I left Washington State, driving a 17ft U-Haul trailer, my car towed behind it, alone, for Bridgeport, Connecticut. Because I couldn’t live on a government salary, I took a job at Barnes & Noble in Westport. Working in the café, I met Z. We went on a date on October 2, and I was in love with him on October 3. Together, we’ve buried six grandparents, lived in six states, saw my parents’ divorce, married at the courthouse in Virginia, traveled to Rome, lived with in-laws, drove cross country to see Yellowstone, the Redwoods, had a small wedding, went to London, got MFAs, had surgeries, had a baby, completed a PhD, buried a parent, moved to Brooklyn, reconnected with good friends, kept making art and writing stories, weathered rejection, survived a global pandemic, ended relationships with parents, traveled to Mexico, started powerlifting, attended a sibling’s wedding, and traveled to Paris. But among those larger moments are smaller ones where we woke up next to each other and talked about our dreams, celebrated first steps and the way S giggled in her sleep, a first loose tooth, a bluebird perched on the chain-link fence on Pacific Street, jumping a rat on a darkened sidewalk, a bite of perfect carrot cake from La Napa, dancing in the living room, fireworks across the river on New Year’s Eve, and a warm sugar donut on the park bench, no matter the weather. 25 years.
On Tuesday, I turn 50, and even though I have no idea what the years will bring, I hope that I spend the next 50 with Z by my side. And based on what life has offered up in the first 50, I know there will be laughter and sadness. I hope for more of the first and less of the latter, but realistically I know we will lose parents and siblings and eventually each other, and that is too much to comprehend. I hope S is healthy and happy, that she realizes her dreams, and recognizes that I tried my best because on most days, if not all, I’m just making up shit as I go along.
Occasionally we take out the photo albums and this little, redhaired girl stares back at me. I don’t know this shy, scared girl with so much anger under the surface, the teenager with braces and so many insecurities, and that’s a good thing. She’s grown up and expanded her once very small world. She holds her head up and laughs out loud and takes up space. It doesn’t mean that I’m not scared or sad sometimes, but it’s those moments that make the happy ones so much better.