An Essay A Day For A Year
By Roe
Day 70, March 10, 2012
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Today is my birthday, so happy birthday to me! Today I am 49 years old, and the idea of being 49 seems very odd to me. What happened to 9 and 19 and 29 and 39? I often look at myself in the mirror and wonder who that old guy is looking back at me. Inside I still feel 9 and 19, and I’ve been trying very hard to grow up, and someday I might just reach 29. If I do, I want to stop there. I love the idea of growing old gracefully, and 29 is a very graceful old when you still feel 9 inside. I guess I could be a cheesy TV commercial and grow old gracefully, while looking younger than I am, and of course feeling young at heart.
About 10 years ago I went for a whole day cowboy ride on Coushattas, my spirited Paint horse, and I felt an “ugh” afterwards that lasted all the way until the next “ugh”, and my poor body hasn’t caught up yet. Now when I ride my GP motorcycle, many young bucks are faster than I am, or they are stupider. I guess I’m getting too old to be stupid, and the idea scares me. I feel like I already have one foot in the bucket that goes down 6 feet, since I take the time to notice the bucket, and how deep it goes. The other day I got passed by a kid at 90 mph coming out of a tight corner, and he had the front wheel in the air, and waved at me with his left hand. I never could do exactly that as a Ricky Racer buck, but I do remember those days. Maybe getting old is painful, but it comes on slowly as opposed to suddenly on the front of a semi truck.
In my life I have had many “close calls”, where I’m very sure I should have been squished or shot or simply never heard from again. At that time and on those spots I died, and then when I didn’t die, of all silly things, I looked all around incredulous and felt humbly grateful that I was still alive. On those days I grew very old very fast, and I was very grateful for it. It’s a funny feeling indeed to find your brains on the day that all your brains are still in your head, and not on the day when everyone else finds your brains all over the road. On those days my self preservation instinct found itself, and it dawned on me that I was in fact living, and really appreciated it. That is a silly senior citizen statement, and on my close call days I would have gotten on my hands and knees to thank any guardian angel in the neighborhood for being allowed to be a senior citizen some day. Maybe today is a good day to be so proud that I made it to 49 years old.
I find that the gauge of how I am gracefully accepting my growing old is how I perceive my gorgeous 46 year old wife. Every day I behold her with a feeling of “wow”, and I feel so lucky to have won the most beautiful girl on either side of the Mississippi or Nile or Amazon, or the little creek in anyone’s backyard. I really love admiring how beautifully she is aging, and she laughs at me when I call her age spots freckles. I really like freckles whether they come early or late. My wife is a Latina that I met on my trip around the world, in Central America 23 years ago. I just love watching the sexy young Barbie’s drop their jaws looking at my queen as she walks by arm in arm with me, and they are just looking at her sexy and cultured presentation in public. “Just wait “Kitty Cat” until you go toe to toe with my girl!” I say in my mind. Those are the days when I realize that I am growing old, and arm in arm with my beauty I plan to do a lot of that.
I guess today is the day when we look backwards at a life lived, and then forward towards a life yet to live, and we remember that it is the day of our birth. Today we ask ourselves, “how have I done?” And, “how do I feel about continuing?” For me, I still can’t believe I am still here, and every day since those several close call days, when I wake up, even if miserable and regretful, I utter, “thank you”. Thank you is the song of birthdays. Happy thank you to me, happy thank you to me. When I look back I definitely could win an award for a life fully lived. When it comes to bungling things up and regrets, even Mr. Oscar isn’t prestigious enough for me. When it comes to potential not yet realized, I will host the first annual failure awards, and I will take the first trophy. When It comes to “you should write a book about your life”, I guess I should, and that person was just remarking on a mere 6 months of my life that they may know about.
The truth is I don’t ever want to wheelie out of a curve at 90 mph, and I don’t want to have 19 year old Barbie, and I sure as hell don’t want to live my life all over again. Yikes. I just want to “keep on truckin”. I ask the grand master of the yellow brick road, The Wizard Of Oz, (since I am not a believer in God), to please give me another 49 years to live, and to keep making those beautiful freckles on my wife’s curvy, sexy body. Freckles are good. I promise to keep one foot in the bucket that someday will go down 6 feet in the ground, and I promise to keep bungling things up and failing and falling short of my potential. I promise to write one book for every 6 months of my miraculous and miserable life some day if I can just keep on breathing. I promise to stop cowboying my crazy horse around the day I fall off her and break my neck, and yet I welcome the day when just remembering a life fully lived makes me smile.
Today just remembering my life fully lived makes me smile. May a lightning bolt strike me out of the sky today, for whether I am happy or unhappy, I am grateful for it. Whatever I got wrong at 9 and 19 and 29 and 39 I have now managed to bring with me to 49. Hell yeah. And I plan to get it all right, and get it all wrong, and smile trying, because I desire with all my heart to make it to 59. Just wait until you see this fool riding his GP bike on his 59th birthday, just after making raucous love with his beautiful wife full of cute freckles, before galloping his horse, and of course in between playing with lots of grand-kids. Of course I could be singing Happy Thank You day from a wheelchair in a home for the happily deranged too. I can’t wait to find out how it’s all going to turn out. May all your birthdays be just as grand.
See you tomorrow.
yourpersonalmuse@gmx.com
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