First published in the Ipswich Local News April 10, 2024
Regular readers will know that I love a good milestone column. Losing one’s first tooth, learning to ride a bike, the first days of middle school, high school, and college. Driver’s licenses, new puppies, new houses, new jobs — sorry, am I rambling?
Fine. This last milestone was slightly less enchanting: I turned 50.
As I type this, I’ve been a half century old for exactly one week. My birthday was on a Monday, which, I’ll just note, is not generally a day of great festivity.
And I upped the ante of sheer ennui by not only turning 50 on a Monday but doing so while flying to Chicago for meetings.
Ever flown on your birthday? Your 50th birthday?
The upside was that the meetings were at the college our eldest daughter attends. So to be fair, I would be having dinner with her on my birthday.
And also to be fair, my husband (who has been 50 for eons now, by which I mean six months) and I have been doing fun trips and celebrating this mere number all year long.
Celebrating … and recently embracing our confirmed middle-aged status by taking on a slightly frenzied new hobby involving fermented foods.
Specifically, we are into the “four Ks,” which are (sauer)kraut, kimchi, kombucha, and kefir.
We sent some kombucha to our daughter in college, and she dry-heaved over the phone.
Likewise, when I eat kimchi with my eggs at breakfast, our 17-year-old rolls her eyes and bathes herself in enough perfume to ward off lifeforms as we understand them here on Earth, fermented or otherwise.
No matter. We carried on.
Recently, we found a kimchi restaurant, Cozy Kimchi, up in Newburyport. We devoured kimchi pancakes, soups, and salads.
The kimchi is a secret recipe made weekly by a mom. We raved about it and bought some, causing her to come out to meet us — which immediately made me feel like a regular.
A 50-year-old kimchi restaurant devotee. Regular.
What I’m trying to say is that we’re celebrating being 50 while maybe having a tiny midlife moment (if not a full-blown crisis).
But it was hard to celebrate back on my flight, on my birthday, on a Monday, when I found myself in the back row of the plane next to the bathroom. I mean, we’ve all been there. But I did wonder: had I been there on a birthday? A milestone birthday?
It was a gloomy place to be crammed in like a poorly folded piece of origami against the wall. Every toilet flush was part of my lived experience.
But out of the gloom came a voice. “Miss Baird?”
Was it an angel? It was a little raspier than I thought an angel would sound.
“Miss Baird? Are you Esther Baird?” I looked up from my window seat to see the flight attendant staring at me across my two zoned-out seatmates.
I was flummoxed, but because I’m a communicator who writes books and teaches theology, I said, “Huh? Me?”
She nodded and kept going in her increasingly lilting voice. “And does someone have a birthday today?”
What? Had we crashed? Was she actually an angel?
“Uh, yeah! Wow! I mean, yes! It is my birthday today. I’m 50.” Again with the eloquence.
She kept on, “And does someone drink champagne?”
I was now alert and at the ready. “Well, yes, I do.”
She made a mischievous face and proceeded to hand me a small bottle of champagne, a handmade decorated card with handwritten comments, and a bag of M&Ms.
“Happy birthday from your crew!”
Well.
I had no paradigm within which to place this turn of events. Was this perhaps what world peace would look like? Extraordinary and surprising celebrations in the most implausible, mundane places?
Leaning against the back wall of the plane, absently eating my M&Ms (not fermented) and balancing my mini champagne on the seat table in front of me (fermented), I read my handwritten birthday card.
It was the first handwritten birthday card I’d ever been given by a flight crew on my 50th birthday, and that’s a milestone worth celebrating.