Birthdays have long ago lost their appeal…ever since my twenty-fifth, when a friend mentioned I was a “quarter-century old” and I went into one of the earliest mid-life crises ever recorded, I’ve been underwhelmed by them. I admit, the Ides of March is the only day of the year I refuse to touch a computer (which means this posting is being written the day before, and posted today by the computer - think of it as the digital equivalent of “tape delay”), along with the addition of some recent conflicts (is my cell phone a computer? the remote control?). But the truth is, my daughter gets more of a kick out of the day than I do…she makes me a card, she teases me when I shave off my beard, there’s always a stuffie ready for me…you get the idea.

But me, I’m a little weary of them. In the first place, they “celebrate” another year closer to death; especially this one, where I pass an arbitrary decade marker, and leave my forties behind forever. Understand, I’m not depressed about it (I had my crisis twenty-five years ago, and no, a “half-century” doesn’t seem to have the same crushing weight half that did so long ago), if anything, I’m a little bored, since I’ve been thinking of myself as being fifty for months now. I’m also a little sad that this year the Ides falls on a Wednesday, since Market isn’t open and I really enjoy an excuse to walk downtown on this day each year (ok, so I cheated and went down there yesterday when market was open…figures that Take Five, the coffee shop, had a broken espresso machine…).

But all in all, this day is just another in the string of ever-shortening days that connected together form my life. “Milestones” like this one are just arbitrary signposts we use to chart out that time, something that makes life seem a little less…ordinary. Heck, I go out of my way to make the day “special” each year regardless of the anniversary number by avoiding computers for the twenty-four hour period…it is literally the only day of the year I am not typing something on one of the little beasts. But even that is artificial and contrived.

Still, it should be something a little more than any other day…after all, it does mark my 18,263-rd day as a breathing human being (well, a little after eleven o’clock PM will start that day, anyway), and after watching how quickly my daughter has gone from zero to almost eight, each one of those days becomes a little more precious to me, even as memories. And it isn’t like I’m going anywhere any time soon, that metaphysical bus that can hit me any time I step off the curb notwithstanding…with a little luck I should have another 20-30 years to go (although if the rapidity of the passing days continues, it’ll seem like next week), and so should have time to accomplish more things than I have already (someone once told me the mark of a good life is not ever being satisfied with what we’ve managed to do with it). So as I type this the day before, I’m really trying to engage myself into making the Ides of March this year special, not only as one out of three-hundred-and-sixty-five, but a special one out of over eighteen-thousand.

But you know…the more I push, the more I realize something. It’s just another day out of whatever number of days fate allots to me. Maybe instead of trying to make today special just because my driver’s license says I’m fifty, I should begin today to make every day special.

After all, I’ve got a lot fewer of them to go than I did sitting on that wall twenty-five years ago when a friend told me I was a quarter-century old and I became, for a few weeks anyway, the old man I can’t bring myself to be today…