Saturday, August 25, 2007

Birthdays

A fan one of my students dressed up as a birthday card for me. :-)

There's an episode of "Roseanne" in which her mother is celebrating her 62nd birthday and Roseanne asks her mother how old she feels. Her mother replies, "sixty-two, I'm sixty-two years old." Roseanne responds by asking her how she feels inside and her mother repeats her previous response. With a clear amount of exasperation, Roseanne tries to get her mother to admit that she must feel younger than her chronological age inside and later says that she (Roseanne) feels like she's 'stuck' at 16.

Birthday cards from my family.

Recently, I also read a blog post by one of my favorite web cartoonists (Paul Southworth at Ugly Hill) and he expressed a similar sentiment on his 27th birthday. I often feel that my husband retains the ability to see things in the best light and has the unconditional love of an innocent child while still being as responsible in every way that matters for a man of his age. I sometimes think my husband is stuck at 12 in the most positive ways and in none of the negative ways.

Today is my 43rd birthday and I feel every year of it and more. This is actually the way I have felt since I was 17 years old. In fact, the awesome weight of my responsibilities since that time have always left me feeling about 72. Fortunately, associating with my young-at-heart-in-all-the-very-best-ways husband and having someone who has helped lift some of the weight of life from me has brought that number down to about 65. I'm pretty sure I felt older at 17 than I do now at 43. I figure that, one of these days, I'm going to celebrate a birthday and actually feel the same on the outside as I do on the inside. If I had to guess right now, I'm betting that will happen around 55 or so unless life gets a lot harder between now and then. I do wish, rather wistfully, that I would have had the chance to feel like an 18-year-old for awhile and I rather envy those who feel stuck in their teens. Their hearts must be freer than mine and their minds considerably lighter.

In something which may appear coincidental but is not, this blog is two days shy of its first birthday. The reason is that I waited to start it until after I had a digital camera and I got it last year as a birthday gift (originally planned as a gift to myself but my generous in-laws paid for it for me). I'm not really counting the time under my belt and I'm certainly not tracking the number of posts I do but it's rather hard not to remember its anniversaries when they come so close on the heels of the anniversary of my unceremonious entrance into this reality.

9 comments:

Kai | Kat said...

happy birthday, shari! ^_^

Shari said...

Thank you. :-)

Helen said...

Happy birthday! (Did you know that we are now the same chronological age?)

I hope you spent the day the way you wanted.

And, happy almost one year of blogging. I haven't been around since the very beginning, but I've always enjoyed reading your view of Japan. It's different than mine, but as we live in different areas and have quite different lifestyles it's not surprising.

Omedito Gozaimasu on the blog!

Anonymous said...

Happy Birthday!! If what you say is true that you are feeling younger every year than when you're 90 you'll feel like 12. Something to look forward to!!

owenandbenjamin said...

Congrats on the blogaversarry. It's a good blog.

Miko said...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!

I'm catching up to you. I'll be 40 next year! I'm looking forward to it, I hear all the fun starts then.

I often feel "stuck" at 15, in all the worst aspects. Moody, rebellious, perpectually angry at the world for not living up to my exacting standards, etc.

If only I had my 15-year-old body back, eh!

Have a great one, Shari! And happy bloggiversary, too! May it be the first of many.

Shari said...

Thanks everyone for all the kind words both about my birthday and the blog. :-)

Anonymous said...

happy belated B'day Shar. say hi to your husband for me : )

the fabulous foobear

Shari said...

Foo! How wonderful to hear from you. In fact, you were on my mind just this weekend as we (Sharon, 0t and I) were playing Guild Wars Eye of the North and we've also been back on Battle.net (the hubby and I), too. We miss you!

I doubt you're headed back to Arena.net or to the DII portion of B.net but, if you do, I'm on CarlPower at B.net and usually playing tankarificCarl on Arena.net. We're all in the Wrath of Silvana guild (WoS) on Arena.net (Sharon's a fancy guild officer and all).

Are you still playing WoW?

Thanks for the birthday wish! I hope you're doing well. Drop me a line some time or leave a comment letting me know what you're up to. If you don't want it published, leave a note and I'll keep it private.