I suppose most of us, in the beginning, fear the coming years and their passing. We start with skinned knees and hopscotch and then our lonely aching bodies morph into adolescence, like candles slowly burning down to the wick. As sinking ships, we must learn to grow into ourselves, into the tired hulls that sway gently below the deck. Every so often, there will be an anchor floating in the surf, and we must learn to grasp it and pull ourselves up from below.
We have birthdays on Sundays and Tuesdays and Fridays, and some of us will dress up and go out and drink til our knees turn weak; still more of us will blow out the candles on our cakes and smile at one another, then kiss our lovers hard on the mouth. Year after year, we drift along gently without ever really encompassing the knowledge that we are growing older. But oh, growing older is nothing to be afraid of. We only become wiser and more comfortable inside our own skin. It is as if a coat that was once too loose has suddenly begun to fit.
And often, time will look at us through the window and try hard to hold us in its gaze, but time is only a fleeting thing and cannot catch us. There are still years and years, endless rivers of them, and into them we must grow. Birthdays are not lonely things; they are beautiful and fragile like the wings of a moth. We must only learn how to use them correctly, but there is no one to teach us but ourselves. In kindergarten our hands were placed on the piano and our fingers were shaped over the keys, but then it was left up to us, and we began to form the sounds that brought such joy to our ears, and to the ears of those around us. And so with birthdays. Like an instrument, we must learn to play them, and play them well.
Your birthday is a day like any other day, except it marks a special moment. Without your birthday, why, you would not be alive. And that, if nothing else, is something to celebrate.
Happy Birthday, darling. May all your wishes come true.