THE GIFT OF A YEAR

     
                             THE GIFT OF A YEAR


     Well a lot has been said about the elasticity of time. That is for sure.  Recently I was forced to bear witness to yet another birthday…my own.  Now, I am not one who harries ceaselessly over age and the limitations that come along with it—for indeed, age is attitude as far as I am concerned--but I’ve always figured that I had fair recollection of the years I’ve tallied on this earthly sally.  Until now.  For ages--please note that I use the term as a convenience only, since I’m not sure just how long this has in fact been going on—I have been telling people, with what I believed to be the most earnest sincerity, that I was going to be turning 38 this year.  On November 22—precisely 4 days ago—I awoke at my usual time, around 5 AM, and began my diurnal affairs:  urinate, brush teeth, rinse out bowl that contains the residue of last night’s bedtime oatmeal, heat water for tea, saddle up with weighted vest, don appropriate garb for taking my dog on his long morning walk. (Virgil would be crushed if I neglected his morning romp.)  There are other mundane details to my morning routine—but I shan’t inundate you with triviality and inept digression.  So anyway, upon returning home—it is now about 6:45 in real time, which means that my microwave clock and wristwatch read 7:45, and my alarm clock (whose alarm only and always sounds at precisely 2:00 PM by its own time) reads 7:05—I awake to the fact that it is my birthday, and that I am now officially 38 years old--or so I was thinking.  I chuckle, entertain some breezy, fleeting thought about the ironies of life and the passage of time, and proceed with my usual post-dog-walk routine:  urinate, wash hands, turn on John Updike’s audiobook Seek My Face, wash bowl of oatmeal residue, prepare breakfast medley of oatmeal, mixed veggies (carrots, green beans, peas, lima beans, corn—But wait a minute.  Is corn a vegetable or a grain?  Oh well, it doesn’t matter…), buckwheat, flaxseed, pumpkin, raisins, cocoa, cinnamon, whey protein, almonds, milk (a breakfast of champions, no?)—but wait, here I go again with my tangents on minutiae.  Now let’s see.  Where was I?  Oh yes—so here I am, a full grown 38-year-old adult, a year wiser, a year poorer (there’s the return of that breezy thought on the ironies of life I was referring to earlier) than I was as a full grown 37-year-old adult--or so I thought.  I dallied for the next couple of hours (note that I am purposely restraining myself from providing the details of what I was doing over those two hours-- not from lapse of memory mind you, but for want of courtesy, efficiency, and pertinence of material) while I waited for my breakfast to cool.  I was sitting at my desk editing a research paper, oatmeal to the left of me, paper and pen to the right, when my Mom called.  (She calls on my birthday, regularly—just like clockwork, one might say.)  It was 10:00 AM (even though my microwave and watch read 11:00, and my alarm clock read 10:20, my computer clock accurately showed it to be 10:00 AM.  I believe it expedient to have one accurate timepiece in every household, and I have faith that my computer will do its job just as the devil will do hers:  I say “hers” to avoid confrontation with devout feminists), and she proceeds to sing to me, in an abrasively nettling voice, “Happy Birthday”.  But for some reason she intoned a truncated version of the timeless classic—a version which did not include the lingering reverberating final phrase “and many MOOOORE….  (“How strange”, I thought.)  So I thank her, and we begin our conversational sparring, both determined to be cordial:  I make every attempt to tolerate what in my opinion is a shallow, materialistic, irresponsible, and generally morose view of the world; she makes every attempt to tolerate what she perceives to be my dream-filled, lofty, self-absorption.  But that’s neither here nor there—we’ve always driven each other crazy.  Further on in the conversation, as I am elaborating on something about my 38 years of life, Mom rudely interjects with a near maniacal “Todd, you’re 37!”  The she asks herself, “How did I lose a whole year?  How could I have lost a whole year…?”  Blah, blah, blah, blah.  Perturbed, I try to get back to the point I was making—which I have since forgotten—but there is no disrupting this onslaught of neuroticism from my Mom.  She insists that I simply must be 37—not 38.  She has done the arithmetic, and her best friend Dona has confirmed it.  Well, off-handedly I’ve often jested that mathematicians know nothing about arithmetic, but the truth is, I’m not too bad with working with figures in my head.  (Maybe that implies I’m not a mathematician?)  Now it dawns on me—suddenly and shockingly—that Mom is correct:  2004-1967 = 37!!  Good God!  In that flash of an instant I gained an entire year!  Or, perhaps more appropriately, I lost an entire year!  What a gift!  I guess…. (Chuckle, brain scratch.)  Is it dementia?  Ha!  Wouldn’t that be a lark?  The dementia-stricken mind perceives age as a backwards progression!  Hell, at this rate, I figure (correctly, I hope) I should be mentally prepped for rebirth in the year 2041!  But maybe this “realization” per se betokens rebirth?  Hmmm. (Chuckle, brain scratch.)  Sure, I’ve always played these little games where I set my clocks forward so that I might have a kind of  psychological “time cushion” as it were—but I’ve never purposely done that with a calendar!  Well anyway, I really wanted to blog this little episode.  (After all, I may need the documentation as proof to myself next year that I’m really 38!)  Maybe one day I’ll manage to fit this into the context of my TRAINING PERSPECTIVE.  Hell, maybe this is precisely the stage at which my TRAINING PERSPECTIVE has evolved.  In the end—a phrase I use loosely here—I guess only time will tell.  That little snitch!