Rolling Traveler

Every year, just before my birthday, my mother’s aunt Jenny, a great woman who was a huge part of my childhood, would ask me if my back hurt, because of an old wives’ tale about the back hurting just before one’s birthday. It became a sort of gentle running joke between us: “How many times has his back hurt him?” instead of “How old is he?”; “My back’s that sore that I better get some presents tomorrow.”; and “You’d swear he had a birthday coming up, the way he’s complaining!” I still think of that every year, just before my birthday, and if I’m honest, I miss hearing it.

I’ve not been thinking of Aunt Jenny today because of any connection of the day to her life, but because today I developed a very uncomfortable back pain, and upon being asked what might have caused it, I thought immediately of my 35th birthday, just over a week passed. I thought of how she would have blamed the birthday, said I was late, or told me that was proof I was born before my time (which is not true: I was a late birth). The thought gave me a little comfort. I’ve always found the wheelchair and the associated pains easier to deal with when I can laugh at them a little.

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