This week I received one of the best gifts in my life. It came from my kids, and it was a mirror that they held up in front of me. Not a literal mirror, the looking glass kind, but something that made me look at myself in a new light and laugh a good old-fashioned endorphin-producing belly laugh.
I received this gift because in the middle of this season of confirmations, communions, and graduations, I celebrated yet another birthday. I’m happy to report that I’m still on this side of 55, but I feel like I’m chugging up that hill very quickly and will all too soon be looking down toward 60. Yikes! In the not so long-ago olden days, 60 years marked a full life cycle in the Korean culture and was celebrated joyfully and seriously, since who knew how many more years you had left after you achieved that milestone?
Actually, with modern medicine and better health and lifestyle habits overall, even Koreans now regard the 60-year life cycle as ridiculously short. My dad, who is 82, insisted we skip his big celebration at 60 and postpone it to his 70th birthday, which is exactly what we did. I personally don’t want any milestone birthday celebrations ever, but I may even push back my own to 80. Or 90. Maybe 100. You’re as young as you feel, and heck, I feel like I’m 25. Well, maybe 35.
So what was this wonderful gift from my children? First, it was nothing you could buy in a store or online and nothing you could really wrap. I’ve always said that everything I could possibly want doesn’t exist in those places. Health. Happiness. Time. Friendship. Laughter. Loyalty. Love. Peace. Not just for me but for my loved ones. And yes, for the rest of the world. How do you put a price tag on any of that?
My kids produced a video. Have you seen popular videos making their rounds on the Internet, the ones variously called “Sh*t Sorority Sisters Say, Sh*t Lacrosse Players Say, Sh*t Princeton Students Say” –– you get the idea. My kids created and presented to me for my birthday a video titled “Sh*t Mom Says,” and man oh man were they uncannily on target.
Even better they got Will to play me, even to the point of raiding my closet to find my trademark Mom “ta da” dress — present over the years at so many of the happy events of Brossman family life, relegated to the back of the clothing rack, but still close at heart and now immortalized in the Mom Birthday video. It was a real gift to see Will willing to wear the costume and play a role, all in my honor.
I know I have a habit of repeating myself, and my kids captured this. I know I have a penchant for certain kinds of junk food that I call my personal vices — Drake’s Yodels, KFC, potato chips with sour cream dip, and Will imitated me perfectly expressing my desire to devour these things. I also love going out to eat certain delicious dishes that are the food of my people — jambong — a spicy Korean cioppino-like stew and chirashi — raw fish over rice — and how well my children know what my habits are and how predictable I am in my appetites.
There are certain phrases that are woven into our family life: be careful, the roads are slick, love you, please check in. Every family has these words that, as simple as they are, are always laden with deeper meaning and emotion. Not to get too sappy, there are also words like — who left the lights on again, why can’t you help load the dishes, please walk the dogs, who ate my food — words that echo once again as the college kids come home and the routines of every day life are disrupted and reset. They captured those too.
It’s really not too bad being, ahem, 52, especially when you receive priceless gifts like these. But it is a bit odd to have a 13-year-old son and realize I am, at this point, 39 years older than he is, almost four full decades. That’s when I feel my age. This is when it’s especially important to take care of all that “maintenance” work that most women diligently keep track of when it concerns their spouses and children and even their cars and homes, and often neglect for themselves.
So I am pleased to report that I had firsthand experience with the Surgical Center at the Forrestal Village where I had a colonoscopy (everything is good! Get yours today!) and then saw the inside of the brand new Princeton-Plainsboro hospital as a patient for an endoscopy (like a colonoscopy but from the other end!). It seems Koreans have a higher-than-average rate of stomach cancer so my doctor wanted to rule that out. And so he did, though apparently I should try to cut out foods that irritate, like caffeine and spicy stuff. Yeah, right, as if that will ever happen. But it might have to, eventually.
Being good to yourself and paying attention to your health is probably the most important gift you can give yourself because it also gives back to your family. They who poke fun at you in a birthday video need you around for a very long time, so you should do your part to make sure that happens. Next on my birthday to-do list is checking off my annual fasting blood glucose test to make sure the family diabetes is held at bay. Who says getting older can’t have its fun?
