How Old Do You Feel?

I’ve been thinking about that on my birthday

It’s my birthday

and I’ll cry if I want to,

cry if I want to,

cry if I want to.

You’d cry too if it happened to you.

That’s my slight refiguring of the Lesley Gore’s 1963 party song hit. She cried because Johnny was cheating on her. Oh, dear. My reason is it’s simply my birthday.

Now some people love birthdays and yes, I know, it beats the alternative. But I haven’t enjoyed celebrating since I was very young. Maybe because after a childhood birthday party, my mother, honest to a fault, sneered at the presents my friends had brought. I never wanted a party after that.

At 16 and living in the suburbs I took my two best friends to a Broadway matinee and a cheap Chinese restaurant lunch to celebrate that important birthday. We thought Egg Foo Young was exotic. Both friends are alive. We are now all 87. One used to send me a birthday greeting every year. Now she can’t communicate with anyone. She’s deep in dementia. The other is caring for a husband with Alzheimer’s. She’s not having an easy time.

When I was 80, the year before the pandemic, I finally gave a really big party. Entertaining makes me anxious. I spent weeks worrying about the catering, the weather, whether enough people would show up. More than 80 people came. Everyone said it was a great party. My older son, who knows me well, said: “Mom is enjoying this so much I’m sure you’ll be asked back in ten years.” Maybe. Who knows if I’ll be around to send out invites and death has already been culling the guest list.

I have a friend who gives a party each month for her friends having a birthday. It’s at a restaurant and she buys presents, orders an elaborate menu. She’s so gracious and I don’t know how she does it. I went to the March party the other day. One of my fellow Aries, (the best sign of the zodiac of course) said, “Inside I still feel 20.”

I don’t. But I remember that girl. She was fearless. She went to Europe by herself on a small one-class ship. She traveled around England alone, lived in Paris and Rome with her glamorous foreign correspondent boyfriend. She had adventures traveling across Yugoslavia, when there was a Yugoslavia. A girl alone on a train in the middle of the night in Belgrade in those days had to be fearless.

A couple of weeks ago during one of our recent snowstorms, another friend, a decade younger, said she had grown afraid of the weather. Afraid to go out. Afraid to slip. I understand. We call it cautious. Riding in a taxi the day after that storm, I watched young men and women climbing over the ice, not even thinking about the weather. Once I was fearless crossing the ocean. Now I’m fearful crossing an icy street.

So, if I don’t feel 20 inside, like my cheerful lunch companion, how old do I feel? That depends on the day and the part of the body I’m thinking about.

Still, I know I’m lucky and have many things to be grateful for. I do appreciate my sons who I’m so close to, my grandchildren, and my interesting, admirable friends. I also really appreciate the fact I can write this Substack and that thousands of people seem to be viewing some of my posts.

What do I want for my birthday? I’d like more subscribers, please! (Aries aren’t shy about self-promoting.) And to be honest, I’d like to get stronger physically. That fearless girl, that busy woman, unfortunately, never bothered to exercise much.

So that is what I have to do now: Blow out my candles, try to enjoy every day and pick up those damn weights.