A few thoughts on my birthday this year: The road and the wild roses

We all know how much I adore the month of June and all the little summer markers that come with it (no school, watching the first fireflies of the season, catching tadpoles…) and we all know that I have come to associate most of these things with my birthday. The same can be said about the wild roses. Every year we’d look for those pink flowers in the ditch along my parent’s road that always bloomed right around my birthday. They were especially thick and plentiful near the big culvert.

Taking walks and observing the many changes to the ditches through the seasons was a big part of our childhood. The road was also a staple of our every day lives. This is the road my brother and I walked to get on the school bus, the road where we learned to ride our bicycles, the road our mom pulled us in a wagon to pick berries and wildflowers.

Over the years they have done massive construction to our little country road. Time and time again they have scraped and gouged the ditches where all the wildflowers grow. Each season we would wait to see how nature would recover. Each time my roses would prevail. Their masses began to shrink but those familiar pink blossoms were always there among the wild ditch side greenery, greeting me in the middle of June. But in the last couple of years they finally did it. They dug out the ditches to improve the water flow to the culvert.

This year I couldn’t find those familiar flowers blooming to wish me a happy birthday.

I’ve written a lot about the road. Their road, our road. Roads are symbolic. Roads evolve and change, just as people do. As much as I wanted this road to remain the same, as much as I thought I could come home again and find my roses in the exact same spot, at the exact same time, giving me that exact same validation that although I have aged another year some things never change- I knew inevitability that this day would come. And as much as it pains me to admit it- this is part of growing older.

And I believe what scares most of us about aging is wondering when we will forget the way things used to be without a reminder. Will we forget the old cracked pavement when presented with brand new blacktop? Will we forget that feeling of running up the hill, hoping to not miss the bus when it became easier to drive? Will we forget the long shadows the trees used to make across the concrete after they have been cut down?

I’m at an age where I have to accept that the road is going to change. I have to accept that I can’t control everything. There needs to be progress. There needs to be growth. The world, and the road, will continue to evolve around me, whether I want it to or not. I have to be present in my life as it is now, but also find a way to preserve those memories, those traditions that matter the most.

I’m at an age where I feel very torn between the two. And I think part of accepting my age is accepting this feeling is natural too.