Sixty-two

Sixty-two

By John W. Vander Velden

A day came, and I understood that I had completed sixty-two years.  Birthdays are important milestones.  We use them to measure lives.  These years, the significance, of the date, is different than in my youth.  How I anticipated my eleventh birthday -- or the day I turned thirteen -- a teenager.  I faced eighteen with trepidation, knowing I had but five days to register with the draft.  The turning twenty-one meant I had reached manhood.  And my thirtieth left me wondering what I had accomplished.  Every three hundred sixty-five days and change has brought my birthday around again.  Each year the cake must bear up under an increased burning load, as a happy chorus fills the air. 

One should check their driver’s license on their birthday.  Too easily forgotten the renewal of the card.  But there are other things we should take the time to examine, and birthdays might be the best time.  Reflection comes easily when we look at the flaming cake and the few moments that follow our breathy attempt to extinguish.  How can a year have passed?  Have I reached any of the goals I set last year?  How can I be sixty-two?

To me it seems that life passes in a rush.  Days sweep away into weeks -- months melt away and suddenly there I find myself standing over the flames once again.   Surly the time has brought less achievements than I had hoped…. Too critical, I find myself when I measure my own life against others.  Yet I am a content man.  When push comes to shove is there more needed? 

Birthdays are also a time to look toward the future.  To set goals -- even if they seem unreachable.  It gives me purpose, and purpose is something everyone must have.  Tomorrow and the days that follow, well, they are the days in my sixty-third year.  And each day is as important as I make it.  I should do my best to make each very important.  For I find myself upon a journey, on a road I share, for a time, with the most special people.  But it is my journey and like the song says, “May you have many more…”  And so with as much courage as I am able to muster, I move forward -- one special day at a time!

(388 Words)