The Birthday Ghosts of The Past, Present and Future

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In less than two weeks on November 7th, I will celebrate my 60th birthday and I am struggling. Not so much with the number itself, even though I don’t completely understand how it happened. Wasn’t it just a couple of years ago that I celebrated being 50 years young?

The battle with my 60th birthday is not about age or aging, no, the conflict is in my head. It seems the ghosts of birthday pasts, the spirits of the present upcoming birthday, and the ghosts of future birthdays are haunting me, just like the Christmas spirits tortured Mr. Scrugge.

Childhood

During my childhood in Austria on our farm, birthdays were celebrated differently. I am not talking about the normal birthdays, but the special ones my grandmother or other neighbors celebrated. The whole village took part in the celebration and no matter if the neighbor was liked or perhaps not very much favored, the festivities and the rituals were the same on the special day of a farmer, a teacher, or any other woman and man who lived in the community.

In the eyes of our village, the 60th birthday was the first one worthy of a special celebration, then the 70th, and of course all the milestone birthdays afterward.

For the celebrations, the original mountain costumes, normally only worn to entertain tourists or on very special holiday celebrations, came out of the cupboards and were washed and ironed, and the brass band gave their instruments a new polish. At 7 a.m. on the morning of the special milestone birthday, rain or shine, the priest, the musicians and most of the villagers marched toward the house or farm where the jubilee lived. On their way, well-wishers joined the small procession and when they finally arrived, they all formed a circle around the entree, or stood in formation in a driveway and the concert began.

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Some of the jubilees were rudely awakened by all the racket. I remember some older guys looked out of the window in their nightgowns, but most of them were dressed and seemed to have been waiting for the group to show up. Red Cheeks, hair combed, grinning from ear to ear, the birthday boy or girl stood in the door frame, or sat on the bench in front of the house and watched.

I still see my grandmother standing at our barn door on her 80th birthday. She had just been milking our cows, which I always doubted because it didn’t make any sense that she wore her good dress in the cowshed. She too was glowing with joy, hands folded across her chest, she listened to the serenade of the villagers.

I was seventeen and for the first time, I was not just a part of the crowd but personally involved. My love for my grandmother filled my heart, and when I saw her pursed lips like she wanted to tell them to stop, (Don’t make so much fuzz about me) I knew she was overwhelmed with emotions. I knew because I happen to do the same with my lips when I don’t know what to say, or how to react.

She enjoyed all of it, even hugged a neighbor woman she didn’t care for at all. It wasn’t about the presents, which of course many were given to her that day, or the Schlesien Buttercream Cake I had helped to make, but about the fact that everybody felt this was a special day. Everybody had showed up to celebrate with her.

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Even at such a young age, I thought about myself in the future. One day the brass band would march uphill to find me on my 60th or 70th birthday and they would play for me, joined by all the villagers who just came along to congratulate me. None of this made any sense, because I was raised to SPREAD MY WINGS by the same woman who enjoyed her little concert. “Don’t stay here after I am gone, leave and see the world.” She didn’t want me to be a farmer, and she made sure I had a good education and the mindset of an explorer.

Adulthood in the USA

And so it happened. I left and spread my wings, migrated across the ocean to another country 5,000 miles away from the brass band and the little village I grew up in.

When you start a new life far away from home, no matter if you are a migrant, an immigrant, an illegal, or a foreign guest worker, you start from scratch and somehow the ghosts of the past and the spirits of present and future have to align and adjust to the new life. Everything has to adjust!

I had no friends here in the US. I didn’t speak English very well and knew only my husband’s family and other students at the university.

Over the next 20 years, I never thought about the brass band back home, until it came close to my 45th birthday. I am not sure why since it wasn’t a milestone or a “round birthday” but in the evening I looked at all the birthday cards I had gotten in the mail and in person. I had arranged them on the mantel and on tables and shelves across the living room.

In a strange way, that only other migrants may understand, the amount of cards was my proof of emotional success. I had made it in the the new country, I wasn’t any longer a foreigner. I had friends who thought about me and the amount of cards was an indication that I was liked, perhaps even loved. I arrived alone as a stranger, and now so many years later I was one of THEM -not just on paper.

Unfortunately ever since, right about the time of my 45th birthday, fifteen years ago, the internet took over more and more parts of our lives, and mobile phones became handy little transportable miniature computers.

Slowly, people stopped writing cards and a couple of years ago, when only three or four birthday cards arrived via snail mail, I knew times had changed. Images of the old ways back at home came to my mind, and no matter how much I tried to push them away, they kept on coming.

The brass band in my head was playing again.

Then my 50th birthday came around. We had just moved to Ohio and we didn’t know anybody here. My birthday, celebrated by my husband and me, was very small and in the evening I thought that it all would change. In ten years, on my 60th, I would know a lot of people and once again, the shelves or my desk would be full of birthday cards. Imagine 60 cards to celebrate my special day. What a sign of emotional success it would be?

(What is it with me and the cards?) How can I be so centered and at peace in so many ways and be so silly when it comes to my birthdays?

Present

I don’t send out Christmas cards anymore, neither do I send real birthday cards to my friends. I do what most of us do, I send an email or an e-card. I just don’t make sense sometimes. I wish for something that I don’t do myself. How convenient!

My upcoming 60th…sigh! Friends! Where are all my friends? How come all of a sudden I lack close friends,?

I suppose that happens when you get older. Some of my dearest friends have dared to pass away without my permission, others live far away, and sadly some are not healthy anymore and have other things to worry about than a birthday.

I am amused by my struggles. I am so wonderfully imperfect, it’s scary. I know I am being silly, yet I am still moping around and the memories of the special birthday celebration so long ago keep creeping up in my memory. I wish I could turn them off, but it doesn’t work like that.

I know in my heart I will enjoy my 60th birthday the same way everybody else does. Shocked by the number, amused by my emotions, and at the end of the day I will feel grateful. I am a very lucky woman.

I don’t feel old and nobody (kind) ever guesses my age. I feel alright (mostly) and the way it looks like, life will soon hand me another blank chapter, for me to fill to my liking.

What more could I want? (Cards/Brassband!!!! Holy moly what’s wrong with me?)

Nothing, I have it all!

(And the brass band in my head is still marching.)

Future

Perhaps in a couple of weeks, I will finally understand (and accept) that the brass band in my head is just another wonderful memory I have been given.

There is no need to miss what’s not there anymore. There is no room for sulking either. I have seen and lived through so much. I cherish what I have and I am curious about what is there to come.

The old is gone but I am still here!

(Now I need to repeat this last sentence 5 x times a day:-) )

If you have made it that far, you might enjoy this little clip. It shows a typical music band in Tyrol and the houses in the background are exactly like the one I grew up in. I hope you will appreciate it. No worries, I am not crazy about the music either, which makes my longing for the brass band even more comical.