Whining

Embracing the Aging Process

By Emily Esterson, 5-02-07

Remember when birthdays were a big deal? Like 17 (driver’s license), 18 (drink (back then) and vote), 21 (trust fund kicks in for some), 30 (I’m getting old), 40 (I’m really getting old). Somewhere after 40 we really stop paying attention, stop expecting birthday parties or big surprises or even greeting cards.

My mother turns 80 in a few weeks, and this is a milestone worth celebrating, so my sister and I are planning a catered shindig with tents and rental chairs and canapes. Mom deserves it. In the past two years she’s survived stomach cancer (remission), a heart attack that lead to a head-on collision with an oak tree off the Saw Mill Parkway, which in turn lead to the installation of a pacemaker, sepsis (from a tiny paper cut obtained while she and her pal Dorothy were gallivanting around Mexico) and a knee replacement surgery. So mom deserves a big-ass party with expensive booze and a huge chocolate cake. I told her recently that if I’d survived what she had, I’d be smoking cigarettes and eating bon bons with glee.

So you know you’ve reached that middling age, where no one really cares about your birthday, when the full extent of your greeting card haul comes from… Southwest Airlines.

I have to admit it was pretty cute. It was one of those fold open cards with pop-up faces of Southwest personnel, none of whom I actually know. And I guess a Southwest birthday card is a pretty nice gesture considering how much time and money I spend on the Greyhound of the Skies. So I’m really not dissing their efforts. After all, I didn’t get a card from Marriot, or Hilton, or United (you’d think four overseas trips on United in the past ten months would warrant some kind of recognition, but nooooo. All I get in the mail from them are more credit card offers) even though I’ve likely spent just as much, if not more, money with those companies.

I got a couple of email cards, which were nice little animated surprises, but only after I’d whined about how it was my birthday and no one seemed to care.  Of course having a head cold didn’t help. So last night, instead of the wildly fun surprise party, the incredibly expensive, lavish dinner, or the bestowing of the $900 manure spreader (you can see where my priorities lie) about which I’d been dropping hints for months, I watched an umpteenth episode of “Law and Order, Special Victims Unit” in my sweatpants and my husband’s Bart Simpson, “Cool Your Jets, Man” tee shirt.

Now, I have to admit, as far as bummer birthdays goes, this one isn’t the most historic. I planned one of those fun little surprise parties for my husband’s 40th. He’s not really a birthday guy, but I thought it would be fun to have a casual little celebration with his buddies at a bar with good beer. Date of said celebration? September 12, 2001. You can imagine this was perhaps the biggest bummer birthday of all, even though everyone showed up and stared into their beers.  The following year, on September 12, 2002, our dog died.

Okay, so Scot definitely has me beat on bad birthdays. What am I complaining about, anyway? I have my health (sort of, this cold, lingering on), and two healthy dogs. No planes flew into buildings. In Europe, everyone had the day off (one thing I really liked about living there). All in all, a day like any other. Which isn’t a bad thing. No, not bad at all. 

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