So, this past Monday was my birthday. (And yes, we’re still talking about it, thankyouverymuch.) It was…perfect. It really was. Quiet. Fun. And wonderful, in the way that spending time with the people who appreciate you (even if they don’t mention it while you’re cutting their pb&js into geometrically exact triangles) is wonderful.
Oof, 36 year-old Keely would be basically unrecognizable to 26 year-old Keely. (“So…you didn’t dance on any bars? Like, not even a smallish one?”)
I was glad that the day was wonderful because, quite frankly, the days leading up to it were surprisingly sad. It took me a long time to put my finger on why, exactly, I became mopey. But then I realized why ’36’ was hitting me so hard: I remember my Dad’s surprise 40th birthday party. I remember it clear as day. I was 10, almost 11.
It was a “retro” party, with legions of my Dad’s pals and family members decked out in 50s poodle skirts and greaser attire, a real “oldies” affair.
It now makes me realize that my eventual “retro” party will be an 80s-themed one.
And my kids’ throwback shindigs will be…from now. The second decade of the 2000s. We are, all of us, now living in my kids’ “retro days.”
Wow.
Anyway, I explained all of this to P.J.; how I remember my Dad’s face and laughter at that party. He seemed so old to me, but now, in my mind’s eye, he looks like a peer. He would be a peer. And 36 is so close to 40. It’s so close. I’m now at the age where I would’ve been invited to my Dad’s 40th surprise party as a peer- given, obviously, that I wouldn’t have been an almost 11 year-old offspring at that same time (unless you buy into time travel, which I seriously, seriously do, but it would’ve had to have been a longer jaunt into the past, at least long enough to secure an invite to this party and not seem like a complete weirdo, which I am totally seeming right now). It made me think about mortality (yet again.) Because, really, isn’t everything about mortality? Every little thing and moment and celebration and acknowledgment?
And it was there that P.J. cut me off.
“It’s okay to miss your Dad. It’s okay.”
He held me and I took a brief hiatus from my explanations and time travel theories to cry. But only for a little bit. Because my Dad would’ve been the first one to tell me to knock it off with the crying about birthdays.
And I miss my Dad.
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