Another birthday, the seventy-third since my actual day of birth, is looming.

There will be no celebrations to mark the occasion—no gathering of family and friends, no gifts, and most mercifully, no public rendition of that ubiquitous birthday song by a bored, yet dutiful, cadre of restaurant servers. Rather, the occasion will be marked only by a fond embrace from the one who has been alongside for all but the first twenty of those anniversaries.

It’s always been this way for me, I suppose, and definitely by choice. The last real celebration I remember was for my twenty-first, when my parents planned the party to honour the passage of their firstborn from boyhood to manhood. As if it had happened all at once on that given day.

The child is father of the man…, Wordsworth memorably observed in 1802, and so it has always seemed to me. But truth be told, I don’t believe, in all the years spent being a man since then, that I ever left the boy behind. He lurks behind the adult mask, only rarely emerging, as though fearing he’s no longer welcome. I search him out sometimes, if only to reassure him.

I don’t really remember that twenty-first celebration, of course, it having occurred more than fifty years ago. But I do have photographs to remind me of the momentous occasion—washed-out Kodachromes of people who meant the most to me back then—some gone now to their spiritual reward, others, like me, to adulthood.

My mother and dad grace several of the photos, beaming with parental pride (I’ve always chosen to assume), both decades younger than I am now. How can that be, I wonder, and where did those years go?

My siblings—a brother and three sisters—all stand with me in other pictures, our arms around each other, full of that relentless, youthful optimism that has not yet encountered the eroding onslaught of time. But it did assail us eventually, and we have survived.

A couple of close friends were present, both slightly older than I, and eminently wiser (or so I imagined, on account of their earlier entry into manhood). Regrettably, one of those relationships has not survived the passage of years, the result of indifference and lack of effort, I suspect, on both our parts. The other, however, remains a fast and true friend to this day—and he, too, like me now, is well-launched into his eighth decade. Imagine!

Most dear of all in those faded photos is my high school sweetheart of the time, smiling happily, if a tad uncertainly, still getting to know the large, somewhat strange family whose son she was keeping company with. On that day, we were still two years removed from the moment when she would accept my proposal of marriage, and she, I’m sure, had no idea right then that such a fate awaited her. Even I, it must be said, had only begun to suspect she might be the one. That longed-for wisdom prevailed, I suppose.

Anyway, that’s the last big celebration I recall. There were many so-called milestone birthdays along the way—the thirtieth (Never trust anyone over thirty!), the fortieth (Forty is the new thirty!), the fiftieth and sixtieth (the golden years, so dubbed by those who couldn’t avoid them), and even the seventieth (entry point to the last of the three stages of life: youth, adulthood, and You’re Looking Good!). But they never impacted momentously on me. They were just one more marker in a so-far-endless progression of years, gratefully attained, yet no more important than any of the others.

Among the most special greetings I receive each year are those from my two daughters, both of whom endearingly insist that I’m not old, I look terrific, and I’m every bit as good as I once was.

“Hmmm,” I tell them, “maybe I’m as good once as I ever was!”

For the past fourteen years, I’ve been blessed to hear from a younger set, my grandchildren, five in number, who cannot for the life of them understand why there isn’t a big party on my special day, with balloons, and cake, and lots of presents. Not to mention the goodie bags they get at their friends’ birthday parties.

“Don’t you like parties, Gramps?” one might ask.

“Don’t you have any friends, Grandpa?” pipes up another.

So I tell them I’ve had more birthdays than I have friends and family combined, and that on my birthday, I’m more than content just to have my grandchildren near, and loving me.

“Oh, we love you, Gramps,” they affirm. “But goodie bags are still a good idea, y’know.”

I do know. My goodie bag has been overflowing for seventy-three years.

Spring training is underway, the beginning of another (let us hope) magical baseball season.  The boys of summer are gathering once again to ply their athletic gifts, and to amaze us with their exploits on the diamond.

And every spring, their gathering reminds me those happy days, just a couple of years ago, when the annual softball season opened in our Florida retirement community. A mob of elderly, erstwhile ballplayers would converge on the local park for the opening games of the season.

Most of us had spent a good part of our lives playing ball, while others, newly retired, had taken it up only recently. But we all shared the same enthusiasm for the game.

We enjoyed swinging the bat with wistfully-remembered power in the on-deck circle, we loved the anticipation of waiting in the batter’s box, and we cherished the elusive base hits we sometimes might stroke. There was always an exhilarating feeling of freedom in running ‘round the bases at top speed, or in chasing full-tilt after a long fly ball in the outfield—the wind rushing in our ears, visions of grace and glory forming in our mind’s eye.  At such moments, nothing else mattered in the world but the game.

Play Ball!

The game was the thing. We wished it could last forever.

But it couldn’t, of course. Even then, most of us could see the end approaching—still hazy on the far horizon, perhaps, but in sight, nonetheless.

The signs were small, but the start of each season brought more of them. The bats seemed heavier, the balls smaller, the bases farther apart. There appeared to be more holes in the infield for opponents’ ground balls to skip through. The throws in from the outfield lacked some of the crispness that was seen in other years.

In fact, I discovered I’d become a centre-fielder with a second baseman’s arm!

The most significant sign of all was the constant aching in our legs, our arms, our backs—lasting just a little longer than it ever used to. We feared for the day when it would linger all the way into next week’s game.

I guess that’s why we switched to a tamer version of the game, limited to those sixty years of age or older. Gone were the young, aggressive Turks who had overtaken us on the base paths. Gone, too, were the strong-armed pitchers who had overpowered us in the batter’s box.

And gone with them, unlamented, was the notion that winning was the only satisfactory outcome.

Our game had morphed into slo-pitch. The ball would float in from the mound to the waiting batter, crouching, bat-cocked, in gleeful eagerness. When he hit it, more often than not it was to one of the waiting fielders, of whom there were ten (in deference to our declining ability to cover the whole field).

Many of the old softball rules were changed, or at least modified for our game. For example, a team’s turn at bat still ended when three players were tagged ‘Out!’, but no team could go through its batting lineup more than once, even if everyone batted safely.

The best part, though, was that no one seemed to worry too much about winning. At the end of every game, the players would file past each other across the middle of the infield, laughing, shaking hands, and complimenting each other on a game well-played. When asked later (perhaps after a brew or two) about the outcome of the game, we often had trouble remembering the final score.

Most of us always loved playing ball, and we were awfully glad there was still a game for us to play. Because playing, far more than winning or losing, was the elusive reward for our efforts.

After all, it’s not who wins the game that counts—it’s who shows up to play!

We worry about getting old. And we bemoan the passage of time.

But once upon a very long time ago, nobody kept track of the years. People in their nomadic, tribal clusters got up when the day dawned and went to sleep when it got dark. They did it every day, over and over again, until, inevitably, they didn’t awaken from their final sleep. Nobody ever worried about getting old; they just lived until they died, and the tribe moved on without them.

Even today in this wide world of ours, there are countless numbers of people who don’t worry about aging. They live in unforgiving climes where their every effort is bent toward eking out a subsistence-level existence. Or they’re driven from their homes by ravaging armies—persecuted for their beliefs, their skin colour, their ethnic origins, and often enslaved by their captors. They, too, live only until death frees them, far too burdened to bother about the realities associated with getting old.

Yet here are we, inured from such extreme conditions—secure, some of us, in our developed, civilized world, inundated by the availability of all the essentials and luxuries we might desire—and what do we do? We worry about getting old.

Not all of us, of course. Many young people appear to have the same nonchalant, carefree attitude I probably had at their age. Immortality is a given. The halcyon days of youth are destined to last forever. Only old people are old.

Others of us, the more elderly, have learned a sterner truth. Youth lasts only until it’s over, only until our bodies begin to betray us. The rosy morning of youth gives way, grudgingly, to a more austere noontime of life, and then, inexorably, to a deepening dusk we all must enter.

Some people accept that more gracefully than others, some more stoically, some more fatalistically.

Some, of course, do not accept it at all. In the words of the poet, they rage, rage against the dying of the light. Nips and tucks; silicone, botox, collagen, and dye; enhancements and reductions; diets and purging; even exercise—all undertaken by men and women in a fruitless pursuit of everlasting youth.

Why does this happen, here in our world of plenitude? It happens because we measure time’s passing. After all, time itself is neither our friend nor our enemy. It’s just there, it’s always been there, and it will forever be so. No, it’s the keeping track of time that plagues us, wreaking havoc on our youth, eventually forcing us to an acceptance of the stark reality that we are going to get old. And we are going to die.

But remember, we are the first cohort of people since the dawn of time who has ever had the luxury of worrying about that.

Perhaps we shouldn’t.

Once upon a time—well, maybe more than just once—we used to really kick it up on New Year’s Eve. In those halcyon days before children made their appearance, we’d start the celebration, usually in the company of friends, in the late afternoon of the final day of the year. And occasionally—okay, maybe frequently—we’d wind it down around mid-morning of the first day of the new year.

But it wasn’t drunken carousing. Honestly. Sure, there was wine involved with dinner, a few beers during the course of the festivities, and champagne, of course, at midnight. But our carousing was generally of the physical variety, outdoors, playing under the stars.

One wonderful night, in the early seventies I think, we embarked on a progressive dinner party in our neighbourhood. Those were all the rage back then. Five couples were involved, beginning with hors d’oeuvres at the first home, and finishing with dessert, coffee, and liqueurs at the final destination. As I recall, we welcomed in the new year at the fourth place on the tour, but not in front of the television. Rather, we were assembled on the back deck, trying to catch snowflakes on our tongues, and chorusing Auld Lang Syne to the wintry world surrounding us. The champagne truly was ice-cold!

Later, I think around three-thirty in the morning, we started a game of ball-hockey on the road with co-ed teams, spouses on opposite sides, no bodychecking allowed. Of course, that rule didn’t last long, not with the high snowbanks piled on each side of the road. Other neighbours, hearing the ruckus, came out to join us, and the number swelled until we actually had to take turns, in shifts, playing the game. Someone set up a hot chocolate table in their garage, someone else brought cookies, and we played ‘til no one cared anymore who won.

Everyone was home abed by the time the sun came up, but not much sooner!

Another memorable celebration, in the early eighties, was at the lake, by now with kids on the scene. Together with friends from the cottages on either side of us, we organized a mini-progressive dinner party, tromping from one place to the other through waist-deep snow that covered the lakefront pathway between the three homes. Before midnight, all fourteen of us—six adults and eight children of varying ages—slogged our way out on the frozen lake, far enough out that, when we lay down on our backs, no sign of land could be seen. We made snow-angels under the light of the moon, and tried to decide who was better at it, the old guys or the youngsters. The kids outnumbered us, so they won.

On the stroke of twelve, we were all lying on our backs, the starry vault overhead, singing Auld Lang Syne yet again to the boundless universe. I can still recall the semblance of weightlessness, spreadeagled there on the snowy lake, feeling much as a spacewalker might feel, free of gravity, freed from the bounds of earth. To this day, that remains one of my New Year’s highlights.

We did the same thing many times afterward, and it was always good. But never so special as that very first time.

Another season found us out on the lake again, in the afternoon, with grown-up daughters home from school for the holiday. Together with those very same neighbours and their kids, we cleared a large patch on the ice, spray-painted a couple of large targets at either end (a no-no, I know, but we were seized by the moment), and formed four teams for a makeshift curling bonspiel. Large chunks of ice cut from the lake with chain saws served as curling rocks, and we propelled them from one end to the other by giving them a hard push-start with snow shovels.

Nobody remembers who won the ‘spiel, but we all felt like rosy-cheeked winners when we adjourned for drinks and dinner just as darkness fell. Seems to me we were all in bed shortly after midnight that year!

Our last year at the lake before we moved featured a conga line after dinner, started by one of the younger folks and heartily embraced by everyone. We started in the dining room, traipsed out the back door to the deck, and followed it around the house to the front, where we came back in through the sliding doors to the dining room. We must have gone around five or six times, singing, kicking, and laughing ourselves sick.

Thank goodness for pine floors that could stand up to the pounding of twenty-four wet feet. We barely made it to midnight that year.

But it’s all different now. Retired and living in Florida for the winter and into spring, we seem to have lost our zest for the athletic celebrations of yore. These days, our New Year’s Eve gatherings are more likely to be at a favourite restaurant on one of the many beaches in the area, idly chatting and reminiscing over drinks with good friends, ensconced on the outdoor patio waiting for the sun to set into the ocean.

We make bets as to who can come closest to predicting the actual time of sunset, but no one ever pays off. That’s because, by then, we’re trooping inside to our table, already laden with the evening’s repast. We feast, we dance to golden oldies performed by musicians who weren’t even born when those songs were our own, and we talk about how great it is to be in this land of sun and fun. Midnight eventually arrives, awfully late it now seems, and we “Ooh!” and “Ahh!” at the fireworks on the beach, before wending our way homeward.

After we’re home, however—after all the kissing and hugging, the handshakes, the singing, and the wishing of great things for everyone in the new year are finished—I slip outside to our patio where, alone in the dark, I lay down flat on a chaise lounge, stare up at the nighttime sky, and give thanks for all the new years I’ve ushered in. I even whisper a hoarse chorus of Auld Lang Syne to no one in particular.

My great wish is that this coming year will lead me, and all of us, to yet another happy year-end occasion with friends and family, when we can celebrate and welcome another new beginning.

Without ball-hockey!