Thank You, Birthday

          The phone rang at 7:30 am today, and when caller ID showed me that it was from my daughter, my immediate thought was, “what’s wrong?”
But it was grandson #2 wishing me a happy birthday, and I was able to wish him a happy first day of sixth grade. I’m more grateful than I can say that it’s him, and not me, entering middle school for the first time.

          Remember all those movies where the main character somehow returns to being a child or a teenager? (e.g. Peggy Sue Got Married) Now that’s a horror movie. 

          Can you imagine returning to that level of anxiety? How did we ever live through it? It was exhausting worrying about how we looked, whether we’d have someone to eat lunch with, if we’d be able to operate our locker, and most awful of all, being different somehow from everyone else. Because we just knew that would lead to ridicule in some form. 

          When I taught high school, on more than one occasion I would find myself assuring a student that this time in their lives was just a small part of the greater whole of their existence. For my students, who to the most part lived in chaos and poverty, this message was more about them realizing they really would have autonomy over their own lives if they just hung in there. 

         Maybe the old saw that youth is wasted on the young is less true than the fact that they're the only ones resilient and optimistic enough to survive it. 

          I had no idea that this was where this post was going to go when I sat down to write it, but I will say that these thoughts are one more reminder that I’m very happy to be where I am in life. 

          Getting older is just fine with me. 

 (And is this creepy or cool? My Google search page appeared this morning with its name spelled out in birthday cakes, telling me that somewhere in the massive bowels of their machine, they're tracking my birthday. I wonder what else.)