#7: On Half-Birthdays

the boring topic of getting older and the joy in small things

On Monday, I got an email from Drizly, an online alcohol delivery platform. The subject line read, “We got you a half birthday present.” Momentarily, I thought they were telling me that they got me half of a birthday present, but before I finished the thought, I’d swiped left and sent the email to the trash. I do this with most emails, rarely bothering to open them or read their contents. But, about twenty minutes later, I thought about the email again. I wondered how Drizly knew it was my half-birthday. I avoid entering my birthday anywhere that I can, in constant vigilance against birthday attention.

I remembered that it’s an alcohol service. Of course they know my birthday.

I went to my trash folder and rescued the email, opening it this time. They’d offered me $5 off my next order or a $0 delivery fee. I wondered why they couldn’t offer both and why they bothered to give me the option at all. I wondered what I would get for my actual birthday. At the bottom of the email were two ads for a limited-edition Don Julio. I clicked the first one. I was curious just how far that $5 would stretch. It said the bottle was unavailable, and I laughed. 

I wonder why this email drew me in. Why this particular email—from a service I’ve used one time—led me to draw it out of the trash instead of one of the other 20 marketing emails I’d received that day. I let myself wonder for sport, but I know the answer. When I read “half birthday,” I thought “almost 30.”

Yes. I am six months from 30, and I care about that.

I’m embarrassed by this. Astonished, even. I’ve never fallen into the categories I associate with people who feel anxious about getting older. For most of my adolescent and early adult life, I couldn’t wait to be in my thirties. How glamorous 30 once seemed! I think about 13 Going on 30 and realize this was never an original thought.

Maybe it’s the early 2000s pop-punk playlist my boyfriend has on repeat lately or the nearing possibility of World War III, but I’m not in a closet praying for 30 anymore. Instead, I’m feeling like time has passed too quickly and I’m running out of it. I feel the passage of time in everything I do.

My seven-year-old dog Winslow’s skin feels thinner. His bones a little more obvious under my fingers than they once were. I do the math in my head, estimating he’ll live about another six years. I’ve done this since he was a puppy, but now he’s past the halfway mark. This makes me panic. I wanted my kids to know and remember him, and I don’t have any kids yet. This brings me to tears. I tell myself he will live to be 15.

I make things worse.

I calculate how many more times I’ll see my parents if I see them three times a year, like I have this one. It comes out to 81 times if they live to 90. I imagine myself counting down every time I see them, going from 81 to 59 to 24 until there are just three times left. I hate this thought.

I consider that I’ve just cursed both my dog and my parents, and I knock on wood.

There are less morbid things that remind me of my age. Like my bafflement at every new “core” and my response to Taylor Swift’s new TIME cover, which was only, “When does she have the time?” I wonder what I’ll be like in 20 years and how the teens will laugh at my out-of-touch text lingo. I wonder if we’ll still text in 20 years, if we’ll be communicating telepathically, or if we’ll all be dead by then.

I think about something I wrote in my journal a few weeks ago while watching Evan surf Malibu on his 31st birthday.

I think for most of my life, I took the small things as a given. A hug, a phone call, a walk. But I realize now both the effort and importance that the small things are worth. Life is not made up of the big. Milestones are few and far between. All of the small moments connecting them… those make up a life. I have become quite focused on the big. The family. The career. The home. As if the right big things happen, all of the small things will fall into place between them. But it’s the opposite, isn’t it? It’s about the small.

I go on to write about the people on the beach. I watch a dad walk by with his kinder-age daughter. They pause, holding hands and gazing at the surfers. The daughter asks if they can do that. The dad says yes, they can take lessons if she wants. She says, “Okay.” They keep walking.

Three women with foreign accents stand at the water’s edge with their smartphones. They take turns getting photos of each other, first smiling then jumping. I feel like I should be annoyed at their squeals, but I’m not. I realize I’m smiling, too.

On the water, a mother and a teenage daughter share a board. It’s amazing, the way the mother is able to steady the board under her daughter’s jerking movements. How intimately she must know both her daughter and the feel of a board under her feet. I watch the dance between them for a while.

Remembering this now, I’m reminded of a line from a poem that has been on my mind lately, “It is a kind of love, is it not? / How the cup holds the tea.”

I think about the small kinds of love.

A lingering hug from Evan before work. The latte he takes 20 minutes to make me each morning, weighing the beans and steaming the milk just right. I think about Winslow sliding under the covers in the same spot every night. I think of the way our other dog, Georgie, carries her plush toys around like babies, gently and obsessively. I think about my mom’s delicate hand on my back and what that does to a heart rate. I think about the emojis my dad so carefully selects in each text.

I think about how nearing 30 might feel if I stop thinking about milestones, the ones I’ve already lived through and forgotten and the ones I’m waiting for. How life might feel much longer if I think instead of how many more warm coffee cups I’ll hold. How many “ I love you” texts I’ll send and receive. How many more kisses I’ll give the dogs. How many walks I’ll take and in how many towns, whether they’ll be sunny or rainy.

When I think about life this way, it doesn’t feel so much like it’s passing quickly. It feels almost limitless.

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As always, thank you so much for reading.

XO! Claire

Cover art by Julia Wertz.