Birthday

So I turned thirty-four today, which I think I wish I found more unbelievable than I actually do.

When I turned thirty, it just happened to be while I was at a conference for my job, and some co-workers asked me if I felt any different. “Well,” I remember saying, “I don’t feel twenty anymore.” And that’s pretty much how it goes: I don’t feel impossibly older than I did twenty-four hours, or even a year, ago, and god knows I don’t feel particularly grown up. But I also don’t feel particularly young. Maybe it’s the bad back, the recently banged-up knee, or maybe it’s just the natural way of these things. I feel like I’m in my thirties.

When I was in Boston earlier this month, I noted that, as I stood surrounded by crowds of twenty-somethings in Harvard Square, I had no desire to be among them. I felt no great nostalgia for my college days, I said, just the onset of a crotchety annoyance. That’s not entirely accurate. I’m occasionally nostalgic for my college days, just as I’m nostalgic sometimes for my childhood, teen years, or my early twenties. But that’s a far cry from wanting to hang out with these college students, or even wanting to relive those nostalgic years. Back and knee notwithstanding, I don’t really want to be in my twenties anymore. And lord knows, I’d be in no rush to relive adolescence.

I think that’s a healthy attitude, right? I mean, my life’s not perfect and not yet everything I wished it would be, but I’d rather be moving forward than looking backward.

Anyway, it was a really nice birthday, just a quiet Saturday at the old homestead. The weather was beautiful, although too cold to really do much of anything outside, but I spent the day happily watching some television and reading some Kaleidotrope slush. (Discovering that rarest of rare things: a story I want to accept.) Then this evening, I had a nice dinner out with my parents and some very lovely presents afterward — including the first two volumes of Absolute Sandman and a new leather jacket. (I managed to wear my previous one into the ground; I’ll have to be gentler with this one.) My sister called to wish me a happy birthday, and I’ll see her next week when she and her husband visit, and overall I had a really nice day.

Hopefully our dog, who as it happens shares my birthday, can say the same thing. Although I think he’d argue he got much less cake.