Hello, fifty

There is a long standing joke in my family that I am always sick for my birthday. And then, somehow, on more years than not, sick again a few weeks later for Christmas. It’s been so perennially consistent that I’ve come to expect at least a sniffle or headache to accompany me on whatever well laid plan I’ve drummed up to mark the moment. So you can imagine the dark humor I kindled when announcing to my family that I’d decided to prolong my recovery from Covid to really go all out for my fiftieth birthday- no minor head cold or allergy attack will do- let’s rock this rotation with a new post viral syndrome that no one really understands and keep the tradition fiercely alive! Guaranteed it’ll last through Christmas! And New Years! Hell, maybe even through 2023! And this did actually make me laugh. More so, it gave me momentary pleasure in the bizarre irony of our lives, the patterns that seem to hold no matter how much intervention we pursue, the gift of sinister humor that is always available if you dig deeply enough.

Nine months ago, after countless weeks spent rambling the globe in my fantasy-driven quest to find the perfect location, from Paris to Patagonia to Portugal, I booked a ten day stay at a dreamy little hotel on the island of Nevis to celebrate both our ten-year anniversary and my turning 50. We rarely do things like this. I travel quite a bit for work and, once home, kind of lament the idea of getting on a plane for fun. We also bought a farm several years ago and are still very much getting to know this magnificent land, not really wanton for much beyond. But I insisted. We’d saved the money and we both agreed that it would do us good to get out of town for a bit. So naturally, rolling into this past week, I expected to feel awful about all of it. Mad about not going to Nevis, sad about being at home without friends or family, a massive pity party all around for what a shit show this year had become. I braced. I pre- freaked out. (slammed a door) I told friends to stop asking me about my birthday. I booked a doctor’s appointment on that very day to try and normalize (holy hell that this is my new normal! more dark humor!), and told my husband that I’d like the day to just pass, no muster or fanfare allowed. I strung razor wire around my heart lest anything even dare to attempt to push through.

This ricochet is my particular version of getting to acceptance. I swing wildly between panic and total shut down until something gives and I can once again just sit with what surrounds me. On this particular occasion, it was a private, guttural heaving sob while locked in our bathroom with music downstairs to drown out the noise. It lasted seven minutes tops. But it rattled the resistance and opened up some space for just being sick and in Vermont and still turning 50. No, I didn’t immediately see the sun break through the menacing clouds and find bottomless gratitude for all that is but I quit my own wicked company and rejoined my husband in the kitchen. We did our nightly usual of simple dinner and a show or two, said sweet dreams, and I sent off one last call to the universe for grace when I awoke to stare down five decades of planetary life in a body that so desperately longs to be well.

I’ve always cared about my birthday. I know, lots of people don’t and find it bizarre that others do. Some downright detest. But I’ve always summoned it as magical, from turning seven with a cake full of Star Wars figurines to spending it mostly alone the first year after my divorce to a totally inappropriate night of Guinness with a shot of Baileys and piano bar karaoke when I turned 40. The day, too, holds ritual. I always go on a solo run to meditate on what I want the coming year to hold. I like a fancy lunch, preferably with a glass of champagne. Followed by a disco nap. Then dinner with friends, which I usually fastidiously plan and cook. This is my perfect day. Rather, this was my perfect day, because what transpired this past Monday, December 12th, 2022, was perhaps my favorite birthday of all.

No, I didn’t magically heal. No, I didn’t feel amazing. I felt like I typically do these days, tight of chest and short of breath with a twitchy stomach and burning tongue. But that all receded a bit, relegated to some crappy smaller stage while an overwhelming outpouring of love headlined and blew this crowd of one completely away. Letter after letter from my most important people trickled in from my husband’s wrangled stash, a call to action he’d been executing for weeks. A poetic letter about the passage of time, another about a love affair with growing coveted varietals of fruit, one about 50 memories we’ve had together, and one about all that is yet to come. One from my newest friend, one from my oldest. A letter about shared pain and the perspective it has to offer, another about things only my mother can feel and say. I began slowing down the pace, letting each one have the time it deserved to really digest, imagining I was sitting with that person, holding their hand, crying a bit together out of shared kinship and how big that feels against our fast moving and harried world. In the middle of the day, we went to my favorite trail and hiked the flat upper loop-.9 miles- in the soft snow. It put my ritual of solo running to bed. Why bother when I can walk in the woods with my favorite human. Later, we saw a new doctor who actually works with complex chronic illness and was speaking my language like it was destiny. Pulling into our driveway just as the sun set, we were flanked by a set of handmade signs from my beloved local friends that reminded me of folks cheering while running a long race, which, in many ways, is exactly what I’m doing. I opened the last of the letters over dinner, pausing to read parts of them aloud to Heath as tears spilled onto our plates and we grinned like we’d won the lottery. Which we had. Which we have.

As I write, I find myself struggling to articulate how it feels to know how deeply connected you are in the world, how unconditionally loved. Words seem boastful or trite or overly self conscious. It feels momentous, in keeping with what I had hoped for all along, but from the inside out. It feels deeply rooted, like a formidable anchor in a tempestuous time. And it feels humbling, a reminder of how much less you have to carry when there is, indeed, a crowd who surrounds you.