Birthday

Another year. The candles on the cake outnumber the breath I have to spend on them, so I cheat now—two rounds, maybe three— and nobody mentions it, which is its own kind of gift. At twenty I wanted to be extraordinary. At thirty I wanted to be successful. At forty I wanted to be happy. At fifty I want to be the person who shows up with the right thing to say and a decent bottle of wine. The wishes have simplified. I used to blow for glory. Now I blow for: let the people I love stay healthy. Let the dog live forever. Let me keep this one ordinary life that took so long to build and turned out to be the extraordinary one all along. Someone lit the candles. Someone sang off-key. Someone cut the first slice too big and gave it to me anyway. This is fifty. This is more than enough.