30

Sing we now in praises of big round numbers:

Because I'm now as old as the Beatles when they broke up;

Because 10 years ago this morning, I was mixing cement in a barrio in Puerto Rico;

Because I finally look younger than I am;

Because I'm now older than my Mom when she had me;

Because memorizing discussions on my mission now dates me;

Because so does seeing the twin towers in New York but not visiting them, while I still could;

Because I'm visiting Italy next week, while I still can;

Because last week, a middle-aged student told me that she and her husband had many such travel plans for some unnamed future, until he suddenly passed away last Christmas;

Because, strictly speaking, my Mom was already past middle-age when she was my age, wasn't she;

Because, strictly speaking, none of us know when we're already middle-aged, do we;

Because I opened an IRA last week;

Because I should've been killed in that car crash in Puerto Rico, but was miraculously preserved;

Because my older students assure me that the 30s are better than the 20s, as the 20s are better than the teens;

Because 19 welcomes 20, while 29 eyes 30 suspiciously;

Because in my 20s I loved and was loved, traveled abroad, wrote and published, learned the guitar, that is, all the things I feared I would never do while a teen;

Because in my 20s, I was also often heart-broken, broke, exploited, depressed, and caught in blizzards and hurricanes;

Because of the capriciousness of crushes, the months and years that can course through your veins, as your biochemistry betrays you, as you want to be rid of her, all the hers, but also don't want to--your own self turns against you;

Because we played touch-football in the shadow of El Mooro in Viejo San Juan;

Because I white-washed Fajardo;

Because I didn't know what a beach was supposed to feel like til I baptized in the Caribbean;

Because I've lost track of who's still active;

Because everything before my mission feels like a distant haze from another life, whereas I can still connect a direct sequence of events from the day I got home to today; 

Because the Mississippi really does freeze over in the winter--not a miracle, but a common fact;

Because Nauvoo once rivaled Chicago, but today, save for the Temple, could blow away in a stiff breeze;

Because there's still a plate and five screws on my right tibula;

Because my one semester in Provo strangely yielded longer-lasting friendships than every place I've lived since;

Because usually we're all just satellites that pass in and out of each others' orbits;

Because the commute to Island Park was amazing, even though the pay most assuredly was not;

Because my prayer each morning, before we ascended each roof, was simply, "Father in Heaven, please don't let us die today";

Because everything great about Rexburg is outside of it;

Because the Great Wall was the easiest to visit first, surprisingly;

Because the fog lifted from Yellow Mountain;

Because at Chinese intersections, cars, bikes, and people all interweave in, through, and around each other, flowing with the unconscious awareness of the Tao, and none are hurt, or even afraid;

Because you haven't lived till you've heard Chinese middle-schoolers belt out John Denver's "Country Roads" at the top of their lungs;

Because those middle-schoolers are all adults now, aren't they;

Because I've dated girls younger than the 6th-graders I was a camp counselor to in High School, haven't I;

Because I'm already starting to lose track of how many divorced girls I've gone out with lately;

Because the great epiphanal moment in every young man's maturity is the sudden realization that women are winging it just as much as men;

Because I learned twice that my beard comes in patchy and my hair curls when it's long;

Because American retirees in western Mexico still want their dead-tree newspaper but refuse to learn Spanish;

Because downtown Guadalajara gives Old San Juan a run for its money;

Because the Day of the Dead faces the awful mystery directly;

Porque "nada vale la vida, la vida no vale nada/empieza en llorando, y en llorando se acaba";

Because I slept under a bench on a beach in Sayulita under the full moon, and regretted having no one to share this with;

Because Great Expectations once resonated far too much;

Because I then ran a half-marathon, all alone, along the country back-roads of Washington, to vision-quest and clear my head;

Because my IT band is killing me now;

Because installing security systems in Denver was both the mid-point and low-point of my 20s;

Because Summer Salesmen are all closet-Protestants in the worst way (see Sunstone Vol. 170, March 2013);

Because it turned out the Lord really was watching out for me all along, and I drove to Salt Lake with unbridled hope and awe;

Because after the Pharisiacal fundamentalism of the Y, the U was a revelation;

Because I suffered on average one existential crisis a week throughout my MA;

Because Grad School was a humbling and humiliating and therefore exalting experience;

Because everything I learned in Grad School I first learned from Calvin and Hobbes;

Because Mom's piano was the unbearable heaviness of being;

Because I was willing to teach at 7am;

Because I'm still young, irresponsible, and free;

Because Spain just feels like a more expensive Mexico at first;

Because I got to see Guernica just before the lights went out in the Reina Sophia;

Because you really did, like that Spanish song from your mission, ride the train to Madrid, all those sleepless nights;

Because southern France looks like Iowa;

Because you begin to fear that Paris can't possibly live up to its near-mythic stature, that you can only be disappointed; nevertheless, out of an Iowa, the French really have carved out the world's most beautiful city;

Because the Mona Lisa is a masterpiece, which fact I had never before considered;

Because the best view of Paris is not from the Eiffel Tower but the Arc de Triomphe;

Because after French food, I finally broke up with Wendys;

Because I once lost a toe-nail tramping across Zions;

Because at Navajo Falls, I learned once and for all that if all my friends jumped off a cliff, I would too;

Because London just feels like a more expensive Seattle at first;

Because the wrecks of former empires clutter the British Museum, itself the remnant of a former empire;

Because Stonehenge makes London feel young again;

Because Shakespeare just wanted to go home;

Because I haven't been from Port Angeles or Centralia for the longest time;

Because my parents haven't been from Arizona and Wyoming for an even longer time;

Because I'm still from Washington;

Because I am large, I contain multitudes;

Because I've now outlived James Dean, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jeff Buckley, John Keats, Ian Curtis, Kurt Cobain, Bradley Nowell, Buddy Holly, Robert Johnson, Tupac, Christopher Marlowe, Joan of Arc, Amy Winehouse, Percy Shelley;

Because there are still too many more places to go, books to read, people to meet, things to do;

Because what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away;

Because all flesh is as grass, and all glory of man as the flower of grass;

Because the time passed away with us, and also our lives passed away like as it were unto us a dream;

Because all is as only one day unto God, and time is measured only unto man;

Because today is my Birthday.