Forty + 1

Just remember, once you're over the hill you begin to pick up speed
- Charles Schulz

The simple formula sans the summation equates to the union of my elements, i.e. as body, emotions, thoughts, and sensations, that constitute my individuality and identity of my person.

Enough verbiage.

I could go on and on about my complete characterization - good and bad and everything else in between - but this time I will make it incomplex and unmistakable. And besides, even I am tiring of my dramatic and philosophic verses. What really define me and, probably, even differentiate me from the many other individuals turning toward the wrong side of forty, or more appropriately, midlife would have to be the generations in-between my being and actuality in our human world.

I turned forty-one on August 8, 2005.

Forty WAS the symbolic number. Just like a baby's completion of months as he turns a year old, or the regal debutante's 18 years, and even perhaps a boy's pinnacle to manhood as the numerical 21 in years is finally reached, 4-0 is highly significant. For me, that was last year. Between the last and this year, I didn't grow any taller, nor I become recognizably smarter. I didn't even grow any gray hair, bragging so. As a matter of fact, I physically feel even younger than I ever did in the past year. To surmise this understanding of my step up to the age-old (definition of) birthday resolves and comprisal, there really has no life-evolving, soul-searching change in my quintessence. Except for...

Arkin. Lola Minggay.

And all the rest of them that fit in the center of their generational parameter.

Jan Arkin Japson-Rafael holds the trophy for the youngest member of a generation I put myself in. Dominga "Lola Minggay" in the meantime carries the honor of being the Great-great-grandmother of Arkin. Between these two distinct genealogy and parentage, adding the beloved roots, seeds, flowers and fruits of our family tree, I honor myself.

I am defined and differentiated by my son, Rael, who bore his son Arkin. I am extant as Guia's first born daughter who is Dominga's first born herself. Except for my Lola Minggay, all the names mentioned are all eldest among siblings. Arkin, concurrently is going to be a "Kuya" or an elder brother next month. But that's another story to write.

This is the culmination of my birthday this year. I am who I am because of the people surrounding my composition. I not only acknowledge our unique faction, I salute each and every one of them. My architecture is raised by the monuments my Lola Minggay, Mamang Guia, Rael, and Arkin have blue-printed and constructed.

The design in each one of them is common. Arkin smiles the familiar beam on Lola's face as Mamang Guia passed on the aloofness experienced with Rael. And while the little one would still often stumble and trip on the cobblestone of his young paths, his grandma turning toward the other side of 40 may and could still trip on the old, or the new, haphazardly the straight and the flat, or the bumpy and jagged roads of her varicolored thoroughfare.

Our birthdays are feathers in the broad wing of time

- Jean Paul Richter