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Perspective I sat in the company cafeteria yesterday, thinking to write about my conflict over birthdays, my belief that they're not really worth celebrating ("Woo-hoo! One more time around the Sun without falling off!") in contrast with my desire to be noticed and celebrated. I began to write about the fact that Sunday was a really rather lonely, introspective day, which had several points where someone...ANYone might actually have noticed that it was my birth-day, and perhaps suggested doing something to mark the occasion, but nobody did. Oh, there were the usual suspects: My Father woke me with a phone call at 7.15; my Mother phoned when she arrived home from her weekend in Maryland in the afternoon; my longest-standing childhood friend phoned to wish me happy birthday and to tell me she's getting married, which is an entirely different set of issues that I don't have time to address right now; my friend Aaron in Seattle called while I was doing a voice coaching in the evening, so I called him back while walking to the subway, though he couldn't talk for very long, as he was headed to a dinner party with friends. ("And isn't it ironic? Don'tcha think?") No former lovers remembered (despite chatting with them online); no other friends called; no recent dates e-mailed; no co-workers commented; no gifts were opened; no dinners were shared; no drinks were bought; no tears were shed (despite my Father's comment in his card -- I'd received it days earlier, but refrained from opening it 'til I got home from Mass and the subsequent brunch with a handful of the gayboys from the choir -- "Your independence scares me, but it makes me proud. I do not doubt the likelihood of your success." My Father is not a man of many words, but the ones he uses...Yeah). My room-mate didn't even notice. It was, altogether, the non-event I'd professed to want it to be. So why the conflict? This question and my feelings on the matter became moot as I overheard the the discussion of the security guards next to whose table I was sitting. A handful of them were having lunch together (I always sit alone with my notebook, constantly scribbling observations), and one of the men inquired as to the whereabouts of one of their coworkers. The answer stunned my selfish train of thought to a screeching halt. Their absent co-worker had apparently learned that his five-year-old (only?) son was going blind, went out drinking to drown his sorrows, was involved in a car accident and arrested for Driving While Intoxicated, was left by his wife, and will probably lose his job. And I realised that my world could be a much more cold and lonely place than it is. r
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