When ageing doesn't suck

On birthdays, coffee, books, flowers, and dogs

Note: I wrote this on my actual birthday and I kind of love the present tense feel of it!

It’s my birthday today and so far, it’s been one of the best ones yet.

I’m relishing a very unfamiliar feeling: acceptance. I’ve done some great things so far in my one precious life. I have so much more I want to do. I hope I get the chance. If I don’t, it’s ok.

I am also grateful for this: I am able to say exactly what I want and need, and my family understands me so intimately that they can offer it, (somewhat) seamlessly. None of this was easy, mind you. Marriage, parenting, becoming an adult are messy and in recent years, for me, have been fraught. But sometimes it takes a marker day like a birthday to see how far one’s come.

Celebrations with my husband, my girls, our friends, and the dog

My husband asked me earlier this week what I wanted to do to mark the occasion.

He must have quickly realised that one of the things I hate is decisions about things like my own birthday. Without asking, he researched some plays, and sent me some for consideration. We would go with some of our closest friends, as we had on so many birthdays. I responded to his list, and soon another plan had been hatched: not just the four of us for dinner and a play, but the eights of us—our kids and our friends’ kids—for dinner (and no play). It was a subtle recognition that we no longer want to leave our kids behind for a grown up night out, but celebrate with them, because they are interesting and great to be around. The plan included some fun twists: a boat ride to a restaurant in an unlikely part of town (I love this) which would include margaritas (my absolute favourite); and maybe even the possibility of bringing the dog (God bless England).

With that established I texted our family chat with the other pieces I wanted: a family run, coffee at a hip new café on the river and breakfast at home, the four of us. My youngest baked bread and created a feast.

After some gentle moaning about the run, everyone ran, and no one complained. The coffee was delicious. The company, delightful. Over breakfast I read two of my favourite poems, using the moment to remind my kids that beautiful words, well ordered, are a blessing and balm in a complex world. Writers try to make sense of things and those things are quite simple: Love and betrayal; loss and grief; mysteries about why we do the things we do. Friendship, romance, competition, jealousy, family, adventure. It’s all covered.

They cleaned up and I sat in the sun on the couch reading the FT, which my husband bought for me. It was a reminder that habits can change: for almost my entire life that paper has been the NYT. But the weekend NYT costs a bloody fortune and I read most of it online anyways. In the FT I found things I would never read and read them: a piece on the Venice Biennale; a photo essay on the fall of Saigon; British commentary on the idiocy of Trump’s tariffs, leveled with reason and dismay, a change from the existentially exhausting and accurate commentary about his consistent douchebaggery.

My husband tidied the garden and eventually I moved from one couch to another to read essays, this time Joan Didion, Gloria Steinem, Annie Dillard. They edified me in process and content, and I was reminded how much attention is built through reading and how much I love these women’s voices. I almost got up to do things a few times because, well, the to-do list. But I stopped because I could. It was my birthday, I would just read.

Meanwhile our kids retreated to their own worlds: studies, time with friends. On weekends our time used to theirs—playing, baking, trekking to some sporting thing. I didn’t begrudge it, but I sometimes found it tiring after a long week of work. Some of our time is ours again. “The days are long but the years are short,” Gretchen Rubin said years ago. I feel it speeding up.

The subtle art of gift-giving

I would be remiss to not include the gifts—something of a sticky point in my marriage which resolves itself a bit more with every passing year.

My husband came from a family which did not really give them. They do not lack generosity: gifts were simply not an expression of it. I come from a family of gift-givers. All of which is to say that all holidays involving gifts can be a mismatch of expectations. Typically, I want some; I feel guilty for wanting them and berate myself for any disappointment I feel (FFS, I am so fortunate and certainly do not need new stuff). But it’s not just the gifts I want but also the effort, the planning, the thought.

This year my daughter and I shopped for something I really needed and we found it. I am an uncomfortable shopper and she made me stick to it until we found it. (She’s helped me to see why shopping can be useful. You find things you like and feel good wearing them. Do not ask me why it has taken me so damn long to figure this out, but it has). They also all bought me a few things in a charity shop which felt like gift-giving-gold. Beautiful and reused. I got some cool stuff and loved the idea of them out together, plotting and finding.

I wish I was not a person who cared about gifts. But that is something else I will let go of today: self-flagellation. It’s a waste of limited energy. One of the poems I read to my family was Wild Geese by Mary Oliver, a poem I return to frequently.

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Today I will not write about despair, or fear, or worries. I will let the soft animal of my body love what it loves. A partner willing to grow and change. A run along a beautiful river with the humans I love most. Coffee. Books. Newspapers. Dogs. And a spring jacket I plan to wear right now as I head down the high street to find some flowers, channeling my own Mrs Dalloway: "She felt very young; at the same time unspeakably aged.”

*Americans: aging