Birthdays

Yesterday was my 48th birthday. 48! How can I have lived almost half a century in so little time? I think I've run into some kind of time warp. This awareness is particularly acute when I have to choose my birth year from a drop-down menu. Scroll, scroll, scroll ... Past the 80s (my children and their peers), past the 70s (all those young parents), past the 60s (my younger brothers), and finally back to 1958. Can it be that I was born in the 1950s, that time of slicked-back hair and leather jackets? I have no sense of connection to the characters from "Grease". Yet, I learned to walk and talk before the 60s arrived. Can it be that I am a contemporary of flower children and Jesus Freaks and draft dodgers? Though I was only a child during those tumultuous years of the 1960s and don't consider myself a part of that era, I have to reach back beyond the 1960s to find my birth year. Ridiculous. Just ridiculous.

One problem with piling up 48 years of living is how the accumulated list of regrettable acts has grown so long and bothersome. I suppose everyone has done some regrettable things and said regrettable words by the time they are 20. If they listed the ten most regrettable memories, they might come up with maybe a few doozies and then some not hardly worth listing. By the time they're 30, they've added a couple more doozies toward the top of the list and dropped off some of those less memorable regrets from the bottom. At 48, the number of memories that still make me cringe long after the actual event has expanded to push those weak entries from my first 20 years way down on the list. I've had time to accumulate quite a number of regrets that, even with years to gain perspective and find healing, make me cry if I look too closely at them. The price I would pay to be able to rectify the most painful and humiliating parts of that portion of my personal history for which I bear responsibility has grown.

I remember a high school teacher once commenting that we remain the same person no matter how old we become, that he or she (fading memory has robbed me of that detail) was still the child s/he had once been within. Now that I'm at a point to better evaluate the truth of that statement, I'm not sure. Am I the same person I was at 11, that fateful year when my best friend moved away and left me to the mercy of girl bullies who declared me a social outcast? the year I discovered that I might find better friends among my fellow outcasts than among the popular crowd? the year my teacher smiled at me personally after years of feeling unattractive and/or somehow invisible to most of the adults in my life?

Am I the same person I was when I turned 20 and was planning my wedding and future? Am I the same person I was at 25 when I traveled alone as a woman engineer working for the US Navy in civil service through the Montreal airport and Canadian customs and drove to a company in Ontario? Am I the same person I was when I turned 30 and was a full-time mother to three preschoolers and took on the responsibility of keeping the financial records for my church? Am I the same person I was at 40 when those preschoolers hit adolescence and one of them closed the windows of his soul to me?

I'm not sure. I'd like to think that the forces that have shaped me over the years, including those regrettable moments I mentioned earlier, have changed me for the better as I've learned lessons and made choices in response to those forces. Although I am the keeper of the memories, both painful and wonderful of that little girl and young woman I once was, I don't think I would tell a classroom of impressionable teenagers that I am still the person I was when I sat in that high school classroom so many years ago. Experience, maturity, perspective, and my spiritual journey have changed me to the point that the people from those earlier times in my life no longer know me.

Yesterday I spoke to a peer whom I had not seen for years. We were once part of an informal college music group and traveled together on weekends. As we chatted about old times, I sensed a barrier between us. It may have been simply the years of distance from when we knew each other, but I couldn’t help but wonder if her memories of our times together made her less than enthused about renewed acquaintance with me. Interestingly enough, I sensed the same thing when chatting with another member of that same group whose path crossed mine a couple of years ago. Was I so obnoxious at 19? Would they like me better at 48 if they knew me? I suspect I’ll never know the answer to that question, although I think the reason I noticed the reticence was because people of similar backgrounds and circumstances don’t generally respond to my overtures of friendliness in such a manner at this point in my life. (Maybe they would if they tried to live with me for a few weekends.)

48 years old. I don’t know how old I consider myself, but not that old. There has to be a mistake somewhere. Right?