Happy Birthday to me!

It’s that time of the year: I’m getting older, and even though that happens every day, once a year it gets a little more obvious, when my actual age changes. Is it normal to reflect upon your life and your choices when it’s your birthday?

There are things I wish I had done differently. I wish I had made that final push to get my doctorate. Maybe one day, still. I’ve been reading a book about Richard Feynman, and although he was young when he started his academic career, he talks about how people often were older when they started the university, because of the war and all. Maybe it’s OK to go back to school when you’re older? I could still do it, right?

And what about all those babies I want? And I’d really like to see the Great Wall of China. Things like these cross my mind, about this time of the year.

Every year around this time, Courtney and I also have a very special discussion. It will go something like this: Courtney will start by asking – or saying,

"What do you want for your birthday, and what do you want to do?"

I'll answer, "I don’t care, at all, what I get or what we do; I just want to *not* have to organize it or think about it. For one day of the year, I don’t want to be in charge."

"OK. But you have to tell me exactly what you want, or I won’t know what to get."

"Eh, I would like not to have to make decisions."

"OK? [Contemplative pause] You also have to tell me exactly what you want to do. I can’t organize what you want if I don’t know what you want."

"I don’t want anything in particular, I just *don’t* want to have to be the one deciding what to do or how, where, with whom, etc. That’s all I want."

"OK. But if you don’t tell me what that exactly is, then I can’t organize it."

You get the point. Every year I’m amazed at how this intelligent, bright, well-read doctor of philosophy can completely not understand the idea of something so very simple. Is it a guy thing? Although to his credit, it always works out all right. Tomorrow I think we might be going on a felucca, to watch the sun set over Cairo and the Nile: wine, cheese, crackers, treats, and happy kids. Sound good to me.