It is now May 23, 2011. 65 years ago I was born, in New York City. My mother was Sylvia Livingston Bernstein. She graduated from Hunter College High School at 14, Cornell at 18, Columbia Law at 21. Because of her experiences she kept saying no when our school system wanted to accelerate me, but finally left the choice to me and after 4 weeks in 6th grade I moved to 7th.
My father was Louis Morton Bernstein. His father was an immigrant tailor, but he (and four of his five siblings) graduated from Cornell, in his case Phi Beta Kappa in Economics. He reached ABD in economics, served as the chief statistician for the RNC in 1936, and was a successful business executive and later a consultant, as well as adjunct at Columbia Business School.
I was the 2nd child. My older sister Judy was born in October of 1943, while my parents had reconnected in DC when both were at the Office of Price Administration. By the time my sister was born my dad was in the Navy, at the Bureau of Ships.
65 is a number. This age used to be quite significant. Perhaps not as much so now, with full social security not until I am 66.
The number is significant to me. I feel my age. I've earned the gray in my hair and my beard.
But I don 't really feel old.
Perhaps that is because I spend so much time among people young enough to be my grandchildren. I experience part of the world through their eyes. I hear their fears and their dreams. I remember what it was like to be 13 and 14 and 15 and 16. Remember - I teach 10th graders. Each year I seem to have at least one who is only 13 at the start of the year, meaning s/he will graduate when 16. I was barely 17 when I graduated, so I have some sympathy. I have a hard time imagining heading to college at 14 as did my mother.
My mother. She was not yet 48 when she died. My father lived into his 80s. His older brother into his 90s. His baby sister until past her 89th birthday. Both of my mothers siblings lived into their 80s. I don't feel as if my life may soon end, but I know I am far closer to the end than I am to its beginning.
Still, that does not matter all that much.
I am incredibly lucky. As I write this, beginning before my birthday, I know I am loved without question. There are five felines we have rescued. I have memories of a Shetland Sheepdog who was the most loving creature I have ever known.
And then there is Leaves on the Current.
We have been together for more than 36 years, married for more than 25. Still she tries to find ways to remind me that I am loved, that I have worth. When I am depressed - as is often the case on Saturday nights when I am furthest away from my classroom - she comforts me, knowing how important my teaching is.
For my birthday she wanted to surprise me by getting our baby grand piano tuned, hoping I would then spend part of the evening playing it. She could not work that out, but the thought warms me - on our first date i played some Bach for her, and music has been an important part of our shared experience together. One memorable occasion, about which she recently remarked, was at a New Year's Evening musicale at the home of her suitemate from Harvard. Leaves sang a Schumann setting of a Goethe Poem, with me accompanying her. Just today she reminded me that she thought it one of the few cases where the music improved the communication of the poem.
I am difficult. No, let's be fair. I am impossible in more than a few ways. Yet still we are together, because of the largeness of her heart. A largeness of heart that one sees towards animals, towards her various nieces and nephews, to people she may not know all that well but who turn to her for advice, or for comfort.
I am a teacher because she saw it was important for me, and made sacrifices of some of her dreams and of her time to enable me to fulfill the path I did not know was mine until I was almost 50.
I am lucky in that I am am American with a fine education. It began in superb public schools. It continued in a small Quaker college called Haverford, that by all rights should have kicked me out in my first term. Actually, they probably never should have admitted me, since I was very much an underachiever in high school, not in the top 1/3 of my class.
Yet the College took me in. They took me back when I dropped out, served in the Marines, came back, dropped out again, then five years later wanted to return to finish.
Johns Hopkins allowed me to enter an MAT program even though the Dean had serious doubts about my suitability as a teacher.
Hopkins gave me my certification even though my high school placement was almost a failure. Here's the interesting thing: it was difficult because half of my students were tenth graders, and tenth grade was the most miserable year of my life. Yet in the early part of the last decade we moved government classes from 9th to 10th grade, so now i teach students at the grade that was hell for me. Perhaps that is also part of my luck.
I am an American who has usually been of a minority religious orientation, starting as Jewish, wandering through different forms of Christianity including the Eastern church, who is now a Quaker. I am a musician by training and orientation, yet I attend a worship service that emphasizes silence, and does not have music as part of its regular "liturgical" practice. Go figure. But to me it makes sense.
When I was in high school, I had a minor role in our school production of the classic Thornton Wilder play, "Our Town." I played Wally, the younger brother of the female lead. i was on stage for all three acts, the third as one of the dead. I had only one line: "Aw Ma, by 10 O'clock I have to know all about Canada!" What is relevant is the 3rd act. Emily is dead. She wants to return. She chooses to return on one of her birthdays. It does not go well, at least not from her expectations. She decides to accept that she is dead.
I am not dead. Not yet.
Some of my birthdays are memorable. At 13 I had my bar mitzvah, with a big party at the synagogue, and then my own special party with my friends that night.
At 57 I spent the day at school wearing a sign shaped like that on a Heinz bottle, courtesy of one of our art teachers.
I usually write something here on my birthday. What I wrote at 60 I chose to share with my students.
65. 13 half decades of life. No longer as significant a birthday as it might have been for some in the past. I am not yet retiring, although that could be sooner that I might previously have predicted.
The time seems to pass more quickly as I age. Thus I find myself more willing to linger. Perhaps it is over a sunset, or with a cat curled up to me. Maybe I will stop and really listen to a piece of music. I might reread a favorite book or poem. Or watch a movie i know well, or an episode of a favorite TV show.
I am lucky. I will make some gazpacho later this Spring. Or cook up my orange beef. Or maybe just make a pot of spaghetti and make my own oil and basil and other herbs with which to coat it, accompanied by a simple salad with a dressing of my own concoction.
I will take a walk simply to take a walk. Pull some weeds because i can.
Or maybe I will simply decide that it is a fine time to take a nap, to relax, to enjoy a glass of wine, or a gin and tonic.
I have choices. Many people do not. That makes me lucky.
I have community - my Quaker meeting. My school. This blog.
I am not alone or isolated.
I can share my thoughts with others, and know others will trust me with theirs.
I am a person who has had many experiences, who has been able to learn from the mistakes he still makes.
I am 65. But I still have one question I have not yet answered: what will I be when I finally grow up?
Perhaps that is the secret. Perhaps that is why the number of years does not shape who I am. In many ways I am still what my wife occasionally calls her small boy tornado - full of energy, of ideas, of ridiculous plans.
That makes life pregnant with possibilities. Too many ever to exhaust.
Today is my birthday. I have lived longer than I ever expected. And today, in a few hours, I will do what matters. I will go to my school, enter my classroom, and help my students with the process of the real learning, the meaningful questions - who am I? What should I do? Why should I care? Who will care for me? Do I matter? What is justice? Am I good?
I am lucky. Today I will be with young people. Today i get to participate in their lives, their dreams, their hopes.
Today is a school day. That's the really important thing.
My students know it is my birthday. Perhaps that will matter, perhaps it will not.
That does not matter. What matters is that i can give to them.
What matters is that I can be vulnerable, and let the cats love me.
What matters is that I can trust, knowing that the love Leaves on the Current offers me is eternal, irrevocable.
I think I will have a very happy birthday.
Thanks.
and Peace.