Quarantine This Birthday

This quarantine life has me in a state of uncertainty. Am I circling the drain of life? All this introspection is forcing me to face my mortality, and frankly, it sucks. April is my birthday month. Before the lockdown, a small group of us were planning a trip to a casino in the next state.

I was not planning on celebrating my birthday once the lockdown began. It felt pointless. My age is not something I care about, and past experiences have soured me on caring too much. My kids, the only people I care about during these tragic times, share my lack of enthusiasm for making a big deal of my birthday right now.

Imagine my surprise when my mother disregarded social distancing just to come over to my house a few days before. She had asked me if I was going to do something for my birthday. Despite the fact that I told her I had no plans to celebrate this year, considering current events, she wanted to come over anyway. I won’t bore you with the details of how that went…

I don’t spend too much time thinking about my age and the ramifications of it, unless I am confronted with things that remind me. Like my news feed, which keeps suggesting that I spend more time considering my skincare routine “at my age”.

Or some workplace training where I came across the tidbit that people over 40 are in a protected class. I never felt more elderly than at that moment. Clearly, at this age, I must be ancient and defenseless. Like a redwood tree.

Then later on, the same day, the kids asked me how old I was this year. My youngest remarked that he thought it was closer to 48, and I was like do you really think I am that old? But he said he got me confused with his dad. Which triggered a feeling where I contemplated my age.

Like, damn. I am getting old, and soon enough, their dad is going to be 50.

Is this real life?

During the marriage, I didn’t feel my age. The age difference between me and the ex is 4 years. So, there was that constant sliding ruler for me. Someone to keep me grounded in my current age. It was never a big deal. There was someone to share the aging experience with. I was old, he was older.

Since the divorce, my gauge of relativity shifted from a significant other to my children. Which is a difficult equation since I am always going to be much older than them, just mom, the eldest person by default. I am an ancient bag of bones who roamed with the dinosaurs and lived to see the pyramids built.

I would like not to think of my birthday. I can’t rewind the clock and take myself back seven years to better spend what remained of my 30s. And I don’t want to contemplate the birthdays already passed.