fifty-eight tomorrow

Happy Birthday to me!

Birthdays are funny; just about made it another year, whew. But hey, it gets my kids to call. And if they forget, there's always Mother's Day just around the corner.

It's not a prime number, 58, but it's two times 29 which is the age of my oldest child, speaking of kids, which I was, obliquely. For the next two months anyway, I will be twice the age of the first one (then she starts catching up). 29 is prime (I mean really, she is so lovely, and yes, they all are). 58 is not a prime number but it is a prime age to be, because it's the age I am. Any age is prime, come to think of it, because it means I'm still alive. (I don't mean to seem morbid, but I have a cousin who died a couple weeks ago, and he was just four months younger than me. So for him, 58 will never be.)

It does bring it home, the cliché that there are no guarantees, that life is fleeting, when somebody topples over, just like that. So what to do about it? I've been reading financial advice recently, and it's all about putting off, saving, so that I'll have something left over when I am old and grey (and, no, I haven't got any grey in my hair yet, and as you are asking, neither did my dad until his late 80s, so that's a prime indicator, if you ask me). Hmm, I'm getting mixed messages from the universe here. You know, assuming that the universe has any interest in my personal speck-of-dust in the whole picture. But saving till you are old and grey and then dying when you are youngish and seemingly hearty, well that's just not fair. My cousin was grey, mind you.

But speaking from a strictly biological viewpoint, I'm done; the universe if it's got a plan, got it's work out of me. It's those three kids, you see. I did my bit, and now as a post-menopausal woman, I'm free of obligation (or am, as long as I file my tax return by the end of the month, but then that's not universe, that's speck-of-dust bureaucracy).

Next year, 59, will be prime for numerical reasons. (Primes are of course all odd, as they're only divisible by themselves or by one. I'm already odd, so it should be a good fit.) I know I'm getting ahead of myself a bit here, but 59 is also the age my mother was diagnosed with cancer, so I'm a bit leery of that number too, even though I don't expect history to repeat itself. At 63 I will catch up with her, and after that it's uncharted territory. I'm looking forward to several more primes, 97 being a pretty good sounding one. (Better do some planning, eh, so I'm not sharing catfood with the current furball, should I last that long.)

Bear with me here. There is rust in my writing joints. I've been focused on detail and bureaucracy (estates, probate, final tax returns, trust tax returns, ye gods) so much in the last couple of years, that my journal has cobwebs, and so do my thought processes. But I've been dusting things off (well, that's also because my apartment is for sale, and I need it to sparkle, all the time).

But it's true my thinking about writing has focused more recently. Although I packed up all my writing books and put them in a storage locker along with a half dozen bookcases (oh, pain) for the time being, which illustrates my contention that this apartment is one room short of perfect, size-wise, it's all about marketing, so that we can move to a place that allows some sprawl, and not because I don't yearn for the scent of book.

I know, I know, you can write anywhere, and in fact I'm writing right now in a very pleasant room with two (holdout) bookcases warming the scene. It's a shared space though, which is why I want to move. I don't want to keel over with my books and journals all moldering in a storage locker. I want them spread out on my bookcases, in a room with windows looking out over greenery.

So, that brings me back to my birthday. I want a buyer for my apartment, for my birthday. Universe, are you listening? (Because tomorrow is all about me ;-)

Oh, and Leonardo da Vinci, too. He'd be 558, if the universe had allowed.