A birthday eve is a lot like Christmas eve, although there is considerably less fanfare, and as you get older, even less fanfare. Best, as you age, to keep increasingly more quiet about your upcoming birthday.

Me, I am in January going to get a calendar and put the dates of my friend’s birthdays on it. This way I won’t forget about this important/unimportant event.

So today the Bright Lights Book Project hosted a reading. The readers were 17 year old Hayden Write, 69 year old Bill Schmidtkunz, and 65 year old Hilary Saffron. It was, listening them, like figuring out how to ride the tricycle bicycle – balance was the all important factor.

Bill and Hayden

I figured out that I can ride the tricycle bicycle if the seat is higher.

That was an aside.

Hayden read from his third book, the genre is fantasy/science fiction. Bill read from his stack manuscript in progress, the genre is poetry. And Hilary read from two of her published books, the genre is nonfiction.

Oddly enough, Hilary’s work most resonated with me, this being my birthday eve. She wrote about the subject of aging, making light of it. 40 years was the cutoff point, in her mind from then everything goes downhill, or at least this is her take on it.

The cutoff point came much later for me.

Hilary’s witty, but very real truisms rang a bell for me. I would not admit this to anyone, nor will I admit to my age. I have been in in denial (and this is not a river in Egypt) in hopes that I might circumvent the aging process. However, as Hilary rattled off the telltale signs, for example, the sagging breasts, the bags under the eyes, the loss of memory, and in general, slowing down physically, I noted that all applied to me.

And there was the big picture. What, I wondered, did 17 year old Hayden think of this? Hilary’s perspective is that of an older woman, so he most likely thought that what she had to say was not applicable to him. I mean, he has 50 years before he has to think about any of this. 50 years. Then he will be 67. Wow. 50 years is a long, long time.

I am also, on this, the eve of my birthday, wondering, where did the time go? This mystifies me. I see people’s kids who are now young adults – they are a measurement of the passage of time, as is Raudi, who is now twenty years old. I wonder if the horse is asking herself “where did the time go?”

Bottom line: I don’t have much time left. And say, if I do live 20 years more, it will go by twice as fast as the previous twenty years.

Jack LaLane’s wife is in her 90s. She said that when he met her, she was eating a doughnut and smoking a cigarette. Now, in her 90s, she’s asking, where did the time go?

Next: 255. 9/17/23: Another Year Older and Deeper in Debt