The first day of my fiftieth year picked up pretty much exactly where the last day of my forty-ninth year ended: in the crapper. My granddaughter, the last tangible vestige of my previous life, stayed over the night before to celebrate my birthday. As she had to leave in the morning after she took me to breakfast, she wanted to give me my card and my cake the night prior.
A planned vacation in August coupled with a month of overspending in June meant that I would not be seeing my girlfriend this month, which meant that my granddaughter would be the only human contact I would have. Feeling very emotional about my fate, since my prior birthdays, even when going through the exodus of my wife (and my life), had some adult contact affirming my value as a human being, I asked the child as I was lighting the candles on the carrot cake (cleverly purchased to go along with a Bugs Bunny birthday card reminding me of my gray "hares" among what little strands still remain to me) to sing me "Happy Birthday."
Shannon, my granddaughter, is a most peculiar, willful, and bashful child, and for reasons only known to her (if indeed known by her) she refused. Normally when Shannon says she doesn't want to do something, if it's something that needs to be done I ignore her refusal and insist on it (as I am and have been acting in loco parentis) and if it isn't I allow her to not (such as try various foods). Had this been about any other person's birthday or any other year of mine, I would have let this pass. Instead I went into an angry depression, suggesting that I would take her home instead.
Recognizing something in my puerile behavior, she relented and sang the song to me. After we finished cake and
Doctor Who, I put her to bed and played solitaire online at
Pogo.com until such time as the feeling sorry for myself relented enough to actually go to bed.
The next morning I awoke to voluminous birthday greetings from the many people on line without whom I would have no friends in my life. The girlfriend called and wished me a happy birthday and the child and I went to breakfast at the Waffle House, which is a "just us" place, as the girlfriend cannot stand the place and the wife before her could not . Shannon purchased breakfast using money she had earned doing chores around the ex-wife's house, and was excited to order and to pay.
Beginning to feel the stirrings of optimism that the day would, at least, not suck so badly, fate's present for me that day was to squash them with its proverbial Monty-Python-like foot. The child's grandmother asked that I stop by her current paramour's house so that she could pick up her swimming gear so that she could go swimming with her cousins, and to assure that the child would want to spend as little more time with me as possible this morning, insisted that I mention the kids were waiting for her.
This had the desired effect and suddenly even five more minutes with grandpa was about as attractive as a dead dog with open sores and maggots. I delivered the child home and then got a phone call from my girlfriend informing me that she was stuck in the middle of nowhere with a flat tire.
Since I live over two hours away, she could not (at least logically) have been calling for my help. But as I tried to be empathetic, I was informed that I "must have" removed her jack handle from her car when I cleaned out the trunk, thus turning what was once a kindness rendered with love into yet another thing I did
wrong, although, truth be told, I did not recall seeing anything that could be used as a handle to turn a jack and believe the handle was either in the car or lost long before my hands ever reached into the rat's nest that was her trunk.
She then hung up, apparently annoyed that I did not use my mastery over time and space to render her jack and her shredded tire whole. I went home and again played solitaire on line until such time as I could go back to sleep and get the other half of a night's sleep I had lost. Just when I was ready to take my nap, she called and let me know she had been rescued. She then began to fret about the cost of a tire and other things that needed to be done to her car.
Since the August trip is a car trip and since the car that was going to be used was hers, I offered her the opportunity to just cancel the trip as a money saving measure. She became angry again, reminding me that she had purchased tickets to a Broadway show and wondering why I would make such an offer. Apparently the answer I just gave you was not sufficient. So I spent the day with her mad at me (and incommunicado), and spent the time napping, then watching
Law & Order: Criminal Intent while doing chores around the house. Jeff Goldblum proved much more pleasant than the rest of my environment.
And so as I face the beginning of the end of my half century, adrift now for two years on the sea of emotions created by the tempest that is my separation and divorce, I ever the optimist am hoping that I will in this year arrive on the shores of normalcy and begin to once again feel comfortable in my skin and my life.
