October 21 is my birthday, so each and every party I ever had, was, of course, a Halloween theme. Crepe paper of orange and black draped the ceilings and spooky letters dripping from bones of skeleton’s spelled out Happy Birthday, Gerry and if my father were not on duty as a cop that day, he too would dress as the monster Frankenstein and greet my friends with a Happy Boo Day. Life was easy, then, or so I imagined, everything fit into a slot, just like television, it was black or white, straight or a mentally ill homosexual, a good wife, or a strange spinster/librarian, light in the loafers of a family man who might have had an alcohol problem from the stress of work or a babe on the side, because, your wife’s housework and cooking was tiring and left her a bit less attractive. We first thought life was finally going to be filled with good, after winning the Greatest War, defeating the fascist enemy and as we were promised this past war would be the last. I was young and was told promise existed, and there were few rules to follow, and some roles to play.
I am now 69. Holy shit! I am the age I can remember my aunts and uncles and some family friends of my parents, beginning to talk more about how often they woke up at night to pee, about the aches and pains in every joint of their body, and how yesterday seemed so far away, and long ago. I am 69, the age that I remember my parents looking older, appearing to become like their parents, and reminiscing way too often about the good old days. 69 was the last of the safe years according to my parents because God Only Knew what would happen at 70!
Yesterday, I was greeted via text, the phone, in person and of course on FaceBook with tremendous love and recognition, wishing me a happy birthday. I took nor take any of that for granted, and smile as I consider the variety of people from my past and present, who somehow formed pieces of memories in my life and still add patches to a kind of quilt we all design an have designed for us each and every moment we take our next breath. So a general and specific thank you for caring enough, for finding the time, for extending the effort to care.
It is now October 22, 2018, as my husband Joe insists I have already begun my 70th year (Boo to that), and wonder, honestly, how the future will take shape. Nostalgia from the past is a tricky game of smoke and mirrors, now you feel, and now you don’t. Memories are similar, some are etched and unremovable, some recreate themselves in the form of I wish it had really been that way. I so much want to face the future with the same kind hopefulness I had as a kid, but now that I seem to be the age at which I best remember my parents, I worry, will still be able to find truth from each day, and will the past from which we recall, as I do from my own youth, be filled with anything but fear, fright, and fascism? The kid who is celebrating his or her birthday on October 21, now…exactly what promise lies ahead!
