I’ve never looked at my birthday as anything special, not for me at least. Other people came before me and played the parts that two people have played through all time to ultimately create a third person. I had nothing to do with my being here. And yet as with so many others I was always the one given the gifts, cards, cake and party when in my humble opinion my dad should have gotten at the least a cupcake each year and my mother a fair bit more. Heck, if we’re being completely honest about all of this they were the ones who created my birth day.
Still, no matter how much I try not to I’ve found myself thinking about the fact that can’t be ignored– that day is coming closer and closer. No, there’ll be no party, presents or frivolity from others for me so once again I find it necessary to take matters into my own hands and create as much excitement as such a moment might demand, from my perspective at least.
When I got to thinking about this upcoming birthday back a bit ago my first thought, and about the only one that kept bouncing around “upstairs”, was a trip to Nevada and “The Bunny Ranch.” It seemed to make sense, no lady in my life, none in sight and all of that so what the hell, why not? Still, as I rolled it around in my head the ultimate cost/benefit relationship just didn’t seem to make sense when I really got to seriously considering the entire experience. And let’s be honest, there’s not going to be much of anything I’m going to be able to talk about if I were to follow through on the idea. So the more I turned it over in my mind the less the adventure seemed to fit with what I was looking for in the way of something that would truly mean anything for more than a moment or two and leave a lasting impression.
No, what I’ve been trying to come up with, in regards to this coming on to sixty thing of mine, is anything that will actually touch my heart and soul. And that’s when I began to realize what a major undertaking I was laying out for myself. I’m the guy who doesn’t have a problem not being noticed. In fact over the past several years I’ve become something not that different from, for lack of a better definition, what I’d term an urban hermit; forced to live among others but remaining distant and hidden from all but a necessary few. For reasons perhaps less than valid to most others, but logical to me, my relationship with the vast majority of humanity has become something comparable to the distance I now have with the entity some call God – not all that great as in, “You don’t bother me and I won’t bother you.” Bothering others isn’t what I’m about but maybe this time I’ll have to, like it or not.
So giving myself the task of doing something that actually means something deep within the very core of my soul is no small task mostly because nothing much seems to move me these days. Virtually all of my life has reached the level of “so what?” Passion and/or desire have become words and nothing more.
Until this morning as I was driving to work and watching the sky beyond the McDowell Mountains as it turned from black to grey and on to sunrise. It was then it hit me, the answer to what I want more than anything for this upcoming step into my next decade on planet earth; I want to know the answer to a question that’s remained with me for some forty years now. I want an end to something that has been in my thoughts daily in one form or another for all these years. Oh sure, it’s gone from the front to the back to the middle and then all over the place though mostly it stays hidden just outside the dark until the moments when I least expect it. Suddenly there it is and I can’t ignore it no matter how hard I try. Oh, I have tried to walk away from it over the years, to bury it in some unmarked grave somewhere along the trail of memories that makes up my past. And of course I have failed miserably.
So it was that driving through the darkness and into the light of a new dawn I realized that now is the time to put it to rest. To somehow answer the question I’ve wanted answered through some forty years of trying to forget and never being able to really, totally and completely let go. At the very least what I seek is a chance to stop wondering about it and never finding an answer. More than once over the years I’d tried in various ways and always with the same result, the silence of nothingness.
Though it is in my nature to be somewhat concerned about what a select few might think the truth is that this morning it suddenly struck me that in this matter I finally only care about me and how I feel about all it. The time has come and I want to know; even more than that I need to silence that voice living inside me all this time. Beyond that it really comes down to, “Hey, it’s my birthday! What the hell should I care what you think about my present to myself?”
Some forty years ago, on a cold fall night in rural Wisconsin, a beautiful auburn haired girl served me my very first cup of Cowboy Coffee in the kitchen of her parents’ home. And with what began as merely a cup of coffee my world turned upside down and inside out. Over the years I vainly tried to find some sort of equilibrium with varying degrees of success. I never quiet forgot all that happened and unfortunately for others I never seemed able to completely accept it either. Thus the chain created from all that would happen has been drug through the years with only a link or two wearing off or slipping away. The time has come to let go and so this is the start and hopefully the end.
There’s no need for me to meet or communicate in any way with that girl who made me coffee that night and went on to live her life beyond any horizon that I ever traveled toward. No, the thought that came to me this morning as I headed east on Bell Road in Scottsdale, Arizona toward another day of what might be was that I no longer want to wonder, beginning in this moment I want to know. And what is it I want to know? A simple thing, that she is well somewhere out beyond that horizon I never managed to get to. It’s as simple as that. No rekindling of anything. No nothing, just to know.
The Bunny Ranch will have to wait, perhaps for the start of another decade. And as for the day when I stumble into my sixties? I’ll likely be doing what I do most days, strumming a guitar, picking a banjo, writing a story, sharing my thoughts on Face Book and of course drinking more beer than I need to. Maybe just for something different on that day I’ll pour way too much brandy in a very strong cup of Arbuckle’s finest.
Hell, how often does a guy get to soothe his soul and touch his heart?
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