Birthday Thoughts

Some Things I’ve Learned in the Past 92 Years

When you’re old, younger people tend to remember your birthday and forgive you for forgetting theirs. That’s one of the little benefits we are entitled to, I reminded myself at the start of my 93rd year. So don’t fret.  The older we get, the less is expected of us, so we might as well make that an advantage.

Don’t wonder why, after you burned another pot on the gas stove, you’re being presented with yet another timer. Don’t say you have three already, just try a little harder to remember to turn one on before you light the flame.  And be grateful for the reminder.

Nothing is the same, moment to moment. How you see depends on how how you look. Stand up, sit down, change positions. Now a hummingbird is at the tristania tree outside my window, sipping nectar from its small white blossoms. Now it’s gone.

It’s close to 5 p.m., the wind is rising and the temperature has dropped. This is the time when it’s good to be with friends, pour a glass of wine or a cup of tea. I remember reading that Dorothy Parker said that if you survive 6:30 you will survive the night.

Younger relatives in Lithuania remembered my birthday, wrote wishing many more years in good health. I don’t want many more years, thanks. My time has passed. I’m a straggler, almost all my longtime friends have gone on.  Even much younger people are past their prime. My second-generation cousin in Vilnius  has been out of work for two years, her longtime job at a multinational firm  gone. “They prefer young people,” she told me. She is learning to paint icons. Her husband is still employed, but co-workers call him “the old man.” The corporate world is not kind. Their younger son competed successfully for a job in the diplomatic corps, in Brussels, the older one is “still searching for himself” he’s drawn to the arts. With the Putin menace looming to the East, my relatives  grow vegetables and  flowers, train in civil defense, help the Ukrainians, help each other.

They are far away, these relatives, but I think of them daily. When I first met them, during my first return to my native land, in 1989, Lithuania was breaking free as the Soviet Empire crumbled. It was an exhilarating time. The Berlin Wall fell, democracy was triumphant. Now hate is in power in the United States. The government has abolished compassion. We are today’s Evil Empire, wrecking the world. How did that happen? Why can’t the evil-doers see that they too will die?

I understand less and less, stymied by the news, by ever-changing technology and my own decline. Everyone talks too fast. Everything moves too fast. I try not to interrupt, so as not to be a bother.

“You look terrific, I can’t believe you’re 92,” someone says.

Smile. You’re weary, having lived for so long, but here you still are. Be grateful, you can still smell the roses, so smile.