Spirit Matters: Birthday is an annual opportunity to reflect

This past week, an email from a career coach indicated that she was giving some of her services away for free in honor of her birthday being this week.

I grinned, as this week happens to be my birthday, too.

Her email got me thinking about how we honor the day we were born throughout the different phases of our lives.

When we are children, our parents often pull out all the stops with games, food, cake and lots of noise. Since my dad’s birthday was the day after mine, we celebrated our birthdays together until he died in 2013. Ice cream cake was always a given – his requirement, not mine. OK, kind of mine, too.

My most memorable birthday was in 1988, when I turned 16. My parents took me to Mona’s Italian Foods in Toluca. There was a group of four people sitting not far from us in the corner, and when I heard the voice of one of them, a middle-aged man, I recognized it right away as that of Josh Taylor, who currently plays the role of Roman Brady on “Days of our Lives.”

Back then, he played the lead male role on “Valerie’s Family,” starring Valerie Harper. The show was eventually renamed “The Hogan Family.” He also previously played the role of Chris Kositchek on “Days.”

Taylor has a uniquely deep voice, and since I was a television fiend in my teens, and particularly a soap opera fan, the sound of his voice was unmistakable.

With just enough fanfare to embarrass my teenaged-self, my mom asked if I could have his autograph, which I still have today in my tote of childhood memories in her garage. On the back of an envelope pulled from my mom’s purse, he wrote: “To Jerrilyn. Much love, Josh Taylor.”

Another memorable birthday was about a month after I began working at Timber Pointe Outdoor Center in Hudson. Summer staff training was concluding, and the camp director thought it would be a good idea to cram all 30 to 40 of them in my office and sing me “Happy Birthday.”

As a pretty extreme introvert at the time, I was mortified. If it was possible for me to crawl underneath my desk, I would have done so, but there was no room to move.

The following year, the summer staff and adult campers serenaded me in the dining hall with “Birthday” by The Beatles.

I am pretty sure my face turned a thousand shades of red on both occasions.

As far as my “golden birthday,” when I turned 31, it was a complete dud. It was cold and rainy all day, and I didn’t do anything out of the ordinary. Maybe I was expecting too much of it. The best birthday surprises happen when you least expect them. See above.

As I got into my young adulthood, I went to daily Mass and on my birthday. I would, of course, offer gratitude to God for the gift of life. But my focus on myself shifted, and I also offered gratitude for my parents giving me life and for all the ways they influenced it for the better. At that time in my life, I felt my birthday was more about them than it was about me.

As my feet are now firmly planted in my 50s, my birthdays have become much quieter and nondescript. And I am OK with that.

In fact, when I read that email earlier this week, I was touched by how this woman was celebrating her birthday by giving of herself. I realized that at least over the last 10 years or so, I haven’t made any special effort on my birthday to truly reflect upon and recognize the many gifts that have been part of my life. Or, more specifically, that I am still alive.

I am at an age now where enough of my peers have died that I am aware that every day is a gift, and none are guaranteed. I think of all those I once knew and those who have gone before me and wonder what their lives would be like now if they were still with us.

The very least I can do in memory of them is to slow down and savor this spectacular gift I have been given of life on this planet. To give all the talents and gifts I have been given as a gift to others. To live each day with a spirit of wonder and awe, and that life exists in this great interplay of being, is a miracle.

One that I will appreciate until my dying breath.

“To be alive is power,

existence in itself,

without a further function,

omnipotence.”

– Emily Dickinson

SPIRIT MATTERS is a weekly column by Jerrilyn Zavada Novak that examines experiences common to the human spirit. Contact her at jzblue33@yahoo.com.