Born in '54; now I’m 54.
Not really sure that means anything or that I can try to make it mean something. Certainly those born a decade or two ago, in ’78 or ’87 or ’99, dream of reaching their birth-year-age. Those born in the most recent years may have already had their moment, those born in ’01 or ’03. My dad reached it in 1934, my mother the year she married in 1940. Lauren won’t reach it for another eight years, Max in another 64 and Hannah in 70.
So since I was born, the Earth has orbited the sun the same number of years as it had up to that point during that same century. So? Yes, hard to make something out of it except that it is a point in time.
The Earth orbits the sun at a speed of about 18.5 miles per second. On my birthday it traveled over 1,598,400 miles. Somewhere in that day-long one-and-a-half-million-plus mile journey there was a bump, a wrinkle, a crease, a sure-spot left at the moment I was born. There must be a second within the minute at 21:46 when I took breath and was borned. At that second, one precise second, while the Earth moved 18.5 miles a second , the distance greater than the length of Anastasia Island, there was a point in the orbit that became mine. My place in the orbit.
As with the birth-year-age experience, I do not know what my place in the orbit means, really. I have thought that all of my strengths and all of my susceptibilities are heightened. There may be an increased ability to over come and an increased number of things to be overcome. There may be an enhanced sense of sensibility, an awareness, an alertness.
And then the second is over and the distance between me and the place grows and grows at a phenomenal speed for the next 173 days. Then, in early August when I am as far from that place as possible, the distance between me and my place begins to lessen and continues to lessen until I am there again and a another year older.