Tomorrow morning I’ll be 74, and while I don’t make a fuss about my birthdays – nobody else does either – tomorrow seems like a big deal to me.

Somehow it’s fitting to paint our house during my birthday celebration. Malon ran out of pain – the porch is done, but not the upper stories.

Maria and I drove to Hoosick Falls True Value Hardware store to buy 11 more cans so he can finish next week and add a second coat. The paint costs $50 a gallon and is rumored to last for a long time.

(She’s passed on celebrating three days of my birthday but is happy to do one. Tomorrow, breakfast for me at Jean’s Place, a play Sunday afternoon, some version of Bird Monopoly at night.)

Up here, given our winters, two coats of paint are a good investment,  worth a lot of money down the line. We are very happy with the color.

I’m excited about my birthday tomorrow.

Why I wonder, is this one important? An insurance company once told me that a man in his 70’s who has diabetes and heart disease is almost certain to die between the ages of 75 and 80.

The thought that insurance companies give me another year, more or less, is interesting, it makes me grateful for the many good things I have. I have no wish to live forever, and I consider death an essential part of life.

I don’t do old talk.  I am just willful enough to go for a long time, but it’s not up to me. I will accept life, either way. I promise you will never hear me speak poorly of my life,  however long it lasts.

If my diabetes is under control and my heart is in the hands of good cardiologists, 80 is not unlikely. But not certain either.

Photographers with a new Leica camera have a lot to live for.

My parents both lived well into their 80’s, their intense dislike of one another and their search for vengeance kept them healthy and engaged.

I love my wife very much, I’m not sure how that translates into health. I am happy to stay I have sex as often as is possible, a good witch who emails me often says I could live to be 90 if I keep that up.

A good friend explained why birthdays are getting more important – “the fewer you have left, the more they mean.” Simple, but it makes sense.

Birthdays are, of course, just another day, but it does give me a reason to consider my life and what I want from it. Birthdays are a marker to me of my success or failure at being a worthwhile human being.

I am not there yet, but working to be a better human also feels healthy to me, a good reason for living. I understand I will never really get there, but the point is to keep trying, I am bound to do some good.

My life has gotten progressively better over its 74 years. I have some wisdom to share, a lot of love, and many of the bad genes have died off or fled to another host. The creative spark – my faith and channel to God – burns brightly.

I cherish my work at the Mansion, and with the refugee children at Bishop Maginn High School. The Gods have sent a band of angels – the Army Of Good – who make this possible.

I am letting go of some things. I’m shedding grievance and resentment and the past like Maple trees shed leaves in November.

The world no longer belongs to me or my generation,  the young will have to try to do better than we did. My heart breaks for what we have done to our Mother, the earth, and to the people who will suffer for it.

If getting older has done anything for me, it has made me more humble. I am a microbe in the universe, I am not important.

One is challenged every step of the way, and the meaning of life adds up to how I responded, not how I avoided pain and trouble – no one reading this has done that, neither have I.

At seventy-four, I revel in crisis and mystery, am wide open to change, to new experience, to learning how to be authentic and open up. Slowly but surely, I am learning how to listen.

All kinds of riches are pouring into my consciousness.

I am, like everyone else, still working on this God business. I’m not sure what God is, but I believe in him or her as the spirit of empathy, the power that grants me creativity,  love, and feeling.

Where I am, you, My Lord, are loved and praised.

The trees love me, and one another. The tiger lilies and corn tassels and flowers are there, proclaiming their love, their color, their light. God lives in the heart of my dear, dear, Maria, who has love and caring for every living thing in the world.

The beautiful dark clouds ride slowly across the sky smiling on the children, who cannot imagine what they are dreaming of, even as they play.

I had a dream last night, on the eve of my birthday. Maria was in it with me.

It was in my head all day. In the dream, I delivered myself up.

I handed myself over to higher powers and gave myself completely to the silence of a wide landscape of woods, birds, and hills, and sea, and desert; I was holding hands with Maria and we sat still while the sun came up over that land and filled the quiet with light and color and hope.

I let the silence soak into my bones, I breathed quiet, fed on silence, and plunged into the next year of my life, slipping without drama into a living and radiant year.