Don't let life pass by in a blur

With my mother-in-law, Dolores Graff, celebrating her 88th birthday on Friday, my family will wrap up a month chock full of birthdays, including mine a few weeks ago.

If birthdays do nothing else, they give you a chance to reflect on the past year and evaluate what you have accomplished and what has happened in your life. Sometimes it is a good reflection; other times you may be left wanting to just forget.

Studies show that as you grow older, the years tend to blur together because there are fewer momentous occasions to distinguish the days. Once the single-year birthdays, graduations, wedding and births are no longer a regular part of your life, the days are just filled with trying to figure out what to make for dinner every evening.

If you don’t think this is true, glance at a rack of birthday cards. You can find cards celebrating every single year from one to 10 years old, but then the gaps start by leaping to 13 to mark the start of the teenage years, 16 gets its own section and 21 warrants a couple rows. But from then on, it’s every decade and the cards only get snarkier, like you are just lucky to be alive.

Unlike when we are young, people were hesitant to ask my age after wishing me a happy birthday this year. While I’m not going to scream from the rooftops that I’m now 48, there is an alternative to getting a year older and it involves an appearance on another page in the paper….the obits.

With seven kids, a question people regularly do ask me is if I wish I could go back to those days of diapers and bottles. Not a chance and not because I didn’t enjoy it. Yes, there were days that nighttime couldn’t come early enough but for the most part, I wouldn’t trade those days when the kids were small with days spent swinging at the park, swimming at the pool or sitting on the floor for library story hour.

But those days are over and can’t be brought back. Rather, I’ve moved onto the next phase of life where my kids are old enough to fend for themselves if I just don’t feel like making dinner.

O.K. that was never really an issue. I’m only half-joking when I say that I could be passed out on the kitchen floor and they would have used me as a step-stool to reach the box of cereal before calling someone for help.

Currently, the years are marked with high school and college graduations. The last two kids will soon have their driver’s licenses. And wedding and birth announcements are likely only a few years away. But those special occasions will come to an end and it is up to each of us to consciously make those years stand out.

A few years ago as the years seemed to start to fly by, I decided I had to do something momentous or outside-the-box each year. So I did an Ironman triathlon which required 15 hours swimming, biking and running. I acted (if you want to call it that) in a local theater production, despite the fact that my memorization skills are non-existent. And last year, I hauled 8 people around Europe for two weeks and lost no one in the process.

As for the future, I still have high hopes to publish a book, learn to play the banjo and keep a plant alive for more than a year. Sometimes, it pays not to set the bar too high.

As for aspirations for the community, I have 2027 marked on my calendar. Not only is that the year my youngest son will graduate from high school, but we better have a new aquatic center in place.

Whether it is the start of a new year or your birthday, everyone should take a moment or two to really consider what they would like to accomplish over the next year. What do you want to see happen over the next five to 10 years, whether personally or in your community?

And if you think you are too old to start something today, consider this: You’ll still be one year older next year. Wouldn’t it be great to be one year older and have something to show for it like being able to playing “Dueling Banjos” from Deliverance?

I haven’t figured out how to fit the following quote on my headstone, but I do reference it every year for my birthday:

Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming “Wow! What a Ride!” - Hunter S. Thompson