2 posts tagged “birthday”

Life by the Drop

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My time here is brief, the sun climbs closer to a point in the sky when it’s searing rays will heat my makeshift office, here on the porch at Los Porticos, unbearable. That time nears, but I should have enough shade to remember my first 30 years.

Yesterday was my thirtieth birthday: March 14th, known to some as Pi day, others as Steak & Blowjob day, and even to some as Albert Einstein’s birthday.

I kept my celebration low key this year, because of what it had come to represent for me. I spent most of the day playing the newly released video game, God of War 2, and while I could fill this page with scintillating details of how much I have already enjoyed this sequel game (based on Greek Mythology but adapted for modern audiences) it would only be to mask my own distaste about recalling my past.
I also saw the most righteous film 300 at an IMAX theater, and was thrilled by the cinematic experience. And though I didn’t plan it, I made a greek day of it by getting food from George’s Gyros, and George himself gave me a piece of birthday Baclava, which I ate while having an excellent conversation with the Gazelle. (Has it really been over four years since I finally cut the cankerous thing that my love for her had become? The scar it left on my soul still seems tender sometimes.)

I don’t think that the number 30 really matters to me, however it is a marker, and has given me some pause in which I feel I should reflect on my accomplishments so far. More so, I can compare my 30 years to those of people close to me, and this comparison has been the direst source of anxiety about my age.

When my Mother was 30, I was five, able to walk and run, talk and ask questions, rapacious in my appetite for learning new skills and ideas. My Mother was working part time, for the family, while I attended a private pre-school, and she dreamed of the day she could return to the life of academia she had left when she became pregnant with me. She already had two bachelors’ degrees, and had always dreamed of earning her Ph.D.—a goal still unattained as she has fallen prey to the distractions of life and family, and the mundane world.

My Father would be 30 in another five years, when I was ten and a precocious elementary school student. My brother would have been about 16 months old, a toddler who only showed the slightest signs of the trouble he would cause us later. He had already worked his way up the echelons of one career, only to be thwarted in his ambition by gross nepotism and corruption within that company. I don’t think he had yet discovered that he suffered lung cancer, though he soon would. Two children and a life threatening disease, and his own dreams of owning and running a business were as dim as any dream can be without being truly forgotten.

My Grandfather Wulf, after whom I am named, had already fought in WWII, been married and had two children, worked in the mills and gotten his college diploma at night school by 30. I don’t know quite when my Grandfather Thompson was 30, but I believe he would have not only survived WWII as well, and been married, but adopted my mother and begun a life-long teaching career.  My Grandmothers had both become sturdy, capable housewives who supported their family and raised their children with all the fervor and devotion that women of their generation in America could possibly show.

Yet here I am at thirty, and while my dreams are still as strong as ever, my only accomplishments seem to be my rather useless college degree in English, a few spectacular failures at romantic relationships, and a mountain of debt. Nowhere in this life is their room for a growing family, nor prospects of a career. Instead of building my future as my forbears, I have lived this past decade learning what a life filled with pain can be, as one part of my body or another has refused to cooperate with the rest since my early 20s. Arthritis, a malfunctioning gall-bladder, chronic migraines, and other, less tangible ailments have aided in distracting me from my true goals in life: crafting stories and novels and imparting what small amount of wisdom I have collected in my ramblings; to travel and see and experience all that I can in order to bring more depth and detail to my writing; to find and nurture a true, loving, romantic relationship; and other, more secret desires as well.

I feel that I have learned, and that I continue to learn with every breath and step I take, though much more slowly than I could have. Or perhaps, in keeping my life unfocused, uncluttered by family and classic responsibility I have forsaken simple purpose for more loftier goals. I know I have always dedicated my life to learning and experiencing as much as I can, and I must not lose track of that now. I have my novel project, and my passion, and my dreams of endless skies. I lack purpose, focus, and resolve.