For A's birthday, we camped along Eklutna Lake. While there, we did all the usual birthday things and spent a lot of time tuned out and observing the trees. A quartet of Stellar's jays patrolled the campground regularly and stopped by on one of the afternoon to scavenge and help themselves to the dog's water before flitting off to the spruce beetle afflicted trees dotted around our site. One of the birds perched on the picnic table bench and spied me with a fervid eye before taking off again. Later, I walked to the camp host's site for firewood and in the afternoon magic I heard a light chittering in the undergrowth and stopped to investigate. A vole showed herself to me and darted away and I had the thought that these two experiences were belated birthday presents for myself alone and could only be retold later in word form and how so much would be lost in the telling. As is necessary, the narrative always fails but you tell it anyway.
During the camp, we three and the Scoob descended to the beach for exploration and to build a birthday shrine for A. She camped a ways up the beach so that Uly and I could construct the monument. As we worked, I instructed Uly in the first and most important maxim of creation: "It's okay to steal". He would not remember this lesson when quizzed him later but I suppose that's for the best. Complete in far less than the 8 hours I predicted, the driftwood tee-pee and small beach rock cairn complex was ready for display. A said she loved it, but you know how people can lie. I suppose I'll have to take her at her word, if simply to keep the peace in the house. Later, there would be more fire and roasted potatoes and a whiskey filtered vigil before the flames and the unanswerable questions regarding the enmeshment of human consciousness and fire and lifespans and time's inexorable nature that could only be addressed by the application of even yet larger quantities of ethanol. I guess some things will be forever mysteries, certainly in this brain, at least.
I have, as an adult anyway and as I'm convinced many of you do as well, come to dread the marking of another year. I always imagined I'd be dead by now and am a card carrying fraud in that I continue to live like a fool. This year was little different. I spent my birthday free from work and wandering around town in a haze before visiting the communal garden. I stopped at the cafe for iced coffee and writing and later still, I would head to the bar for beer and hockey prior to a return home. If I'm honest, it was no different than any other day off I've had in recent memory with the exception that I was now digesting the reality that another year had gone. It seems stupid to persist, and yet I stupidly remain goaded on by the absurd will to survive and the equally bizarre notion that shit does, in fact, matter. A said to me while we were camping the new and terrifying idea that 39 was actually your 40th year of life. I am not okay with this revelation but I suppose everyone must play their part in the production.
K turned 13 this week. Just this morning I was reading a book to Uly that had been marked in the front cover as being "To Adam from mom and dad. 1996" and I did the incorrect math that the book was at least 14 years old before I corrected to add the extra decade I'd left off. That's a thing I've taken to more and more - the dilation of time and the laughable notion that all of my children's births were "just the other day" and that only a few days prior to that, I'd been a boy myself. It's an insane notion that I carry around four decades of experiential bullshit in my dome but it's a true one, nonetheless. I've been lucky, no lie, and here's hoping the streak continues.
