Is It Just Me? – And Counting…
On April first, my husband, Billy, and I celebrated our twenty-sixth wedding anniversary. Our kids, parents and other close relatives bestowed happy wishes and gifts. Billy made his usual observation: “not only have we been married twenty-six years, but we’ve been married twenty-six years in a row!”
Everybody around us took our big day in stride, except for me.
I found the whole event noteworthy and awesomely impressive.
Our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary fell on April Fools Day with a giggle as it always does, but since it came three days prior to our son Charlie’s bar mitzvah, Bill and I didn’t pay the date a huge amount of attention. We made an anniversary toast at Charlie’s event and blithely accepted compliments on our strength as a couple while shaking our collective mortal head over the swift passage of time. Still, Charlie’s symbolic step into manhood was a bigger deal to me and that is where my attention was focused.
But, year twenty-six struck me hard as a mallet on a railway tie, reverberating through my body like the echo of a fast-moving train. “Holy crap” I thought, “twenty-six years of marriage and all in a row!” People smiled sagely when I expressed my shock and then continued on with regular business. I felt like the only person who noticed the enormity of the event. Why didn’t anybody else share my true amazement?
Twenty-six is indisputably greater than twenty-five, yet, whether it’s a wedding or a birth or the number of years spent in graduate school, the number twenty-six has no apparent charisma because it doesn’t end in a zero or a five. Is it just me, or is this an example of random ridiculousness at its most frenzied?
Throughout history, mystical numbers have existed all over the world. In Judaism, thirteen is the age of bar mitzvah. Granted, this number is the first double digit to end in “teen” but it was chosen long before adolescence was even viewed as a stage of life, when kids simply moved from childhood to adulthood with the rising of the new moon. Also in Jewish culture, the otherwise unprepossessing number eighteen means “chai” or life and four and seven are powerful, positive numbers whereas in the Chinese culture four and seven are deemed inauspicious or even downright unlucky. The point is one person’s poison arrow is another person’s rabbit’s foot.
Why, then, have we grown up thinking that yearly events should only be celebrated big-time when they end in a magical five or zero? I remember a friend of mine recounting her grandparent’s happy marriage of almost fifty years. “It’s so sad that my grandfather died a few weeks before their fiftieth anniversary” she said, “so unlucky.”
On the other hand, I had responded, her grandparents shared forty-nine fabulous years in a loving relationship. They were extremely fortunate – “what’s the difference whether is was forty-nine or fifty? Those are just numbers. Try to feel glad that they had a lifetime together.”
My friend had one of those epiphanies you hear about on “Oprah”, just without the music. She became able to invest more of her memories with celebrating her grandparents’ long life together and less of it feeling as if their entire family had been cheated out of a momentous celebration.
Charlie recently turned fourteen, “14 Eh?” as we call it in my house because he may now officially attend films rated 14A. It isn’t enough that I need to buy him a new pair of running shoes every week, now I get to pay adult admission prices for him at the movies, too. Oh, joy.
He has told me that sixteen will be a huge year for him because he has been driving cars n his mind since he was one year old and will finally be able to get his driver’s permit. Charlie went on to say that turning fifteen, however, will just be a normal, nothing year. I don’t agree and I told him so.
If you have a parent turning eighty-nine, why not throw him a big bash for his birthday? Why wait for ninety when you can celebrate the present? I am turning fifty-one this summer. Why is there silence surrounding this birthday when last year’s event was so big and loud and designed to scare the ovaries out of me? I’ve made it even further along in life and I’m glad to be here. I deserve to celebrate with my family and friends even more than I did on my last birthday if that is my choice.
Every year lived is worthy of celebration.
I blame modern marketing and cattle psychology for this obsession we have with fives and those golden zeroes. Card companies would go bankrupt if they had to create greetings for each and every year of life. Instead, they wind us up with printed decorations, special candles, t-shirts, and commemorative music compilations, a false culture surrounding the round ages. Like cows following the rear end of the heifer in front of us, we have elected to perpetuate this bogus practice.
My advice? If your kid is turning eleven this year, make her birthday just as special if not more special than when she turned ten. If you are turning thirty-seven, declare your own national holiday if you feel so inclined. Conversely, if you’re turning fifty this year, don’t worry that your life is over. (That only happens at age fifty-one!) The truth is, despite what magazines and gift stores tell us, we are each able to choose our own celebratory times. The more often we exercise this right, the stronger it will become.
I have been married twenty-six years to the same man. I still like him. I love him more than I did when I married him. We have created a wonderful family, seen each other through hard times, fought and laughed. I am planning a big celebration for our twenty-seventh. Please, join me.
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