Written in honor of Juneteenth, 2024
405?
No: 405. It’s no question. I know you, 405, your trace, your teeth. You look like 404, but I feel you, quietly taking his place in my bones. So how’s about we start off with a toast, to you and me, then? You’re no secret, 405; you could be my greatest joy, how you warm and stretch me like new clay. It was 404 who faced me forward, and it’s you, now, who straightens my spine.
I’m not embarrassed to admit that I’ve been waiting for you, 405. Most folks only wait about a year to get their next great birthday, but I think I’ve been waiting all these years for you, old friend. Hey, do you mind ifI call you that? ‘Old Friend?’ It hits the ear alright, doesn’t it? Feels good. Feels like I’ve known you some time now, 405. Like I knew all the others before you, the way I can clock you, recognize you. And now you’re here just like I knew you would be, and just in the nick of time, I might add: another person might’ve gotten tired waiting around for you, 405. Shoot, at points I even considered it myself. I got worried I was getting too tired; I should hit the hay; maybe you weren’t going to show; maybe one year wouldn’t lead to another to bring us together (time doesn’t always take me where I want it to, I once learned that it’s more of a “what goes around comes around” type of thing). God knows He gave me good reasons to believe that, He threw me enough tribulations, but I kept steadfast for you in the end. Through thick and thicker; through country and city; coda after coda; and here you are and my arms are wide open for another shot—
You know, I think you’ve got what it takes to be the best of them yet, 405. I won’t get ahead of myself, but we could take my game right to the top, you and me, this go around. Take all the steps I’ve been waiting to take for on my own. Get out on our own. Go out on the town! The others told me they could do that for me. Your “predecessors” (or so they called themselves) made me those toasts from their pulpits. They came with their gift-receipt-I.O.Us, their license-track learners’ permits, but that was all salt. When I turned 154, I was told I’m old enough to start book learning, right? I get set up for the three Rs—that’s reading, ‘riting, ‘rithmetic, by the way—and I really go for it. Folks even seemed pretty impressed with what I could do, 405, and I started having these big ideas for myself, but before long the gift-wrapped schoolhouse walls came down and I was still in the kiddie leagues. Ha! 154 never got me into the right schools with the good teachers even after I spent all that learning on writing thank-you letters; I even had one for “His Excellency, General Washington,” imagine that, 405!
Oh, then 244 came, and he was a big one. I could hear him before I saw him, rumbling up the road, casting a shadow before the sun. He pulled me in close t0 his heart, promised we were gonna have a big party to make up for the lost time. The theme? Coming-of-age extravaganza (they always loved my extravaganza flair so long as I wasn’t the honoree). I was jumping at the thought anytime I was alone. Just picture it: replete with a meal ticket and a government ID in my name. And at the end, I was gonna be a full licensed grown-up adult, or so 244 told me. No more chores, no more looking-after. Well, I get all done up for 244; I teach myself special dances for the big day; perfect a menu and everything with what I had around. Finally the day-of comes, I get ready and I walk myself out to what I thought was my party just to find no one there to celebrate, 405. Apparently, everyone was all caught up in some big Family Feud that “had nothing to do with me” that started while I was planning and someone forgot to send all the invitations. 244 had to delay the party until 246 came around, and by the time that fool showed up no one wanted to party anymore (they were tired and scheming over their feud, and so was I, friend). To this day, I’m still not even sure when my real “big birthday” was. I mean, what kind of person plans a fight on another person’s birthday?
Then I begged 277 to be kind- or at least to be quiet- and to leave me intact. I didn’t ask for much, 405; I just wanted to stand upright. From the pulpit, at least he promised me that. Assured me I was standing just as well after I’d gotten a good kick in the teeth. I was standing just as well from the last boxcar. When I wanted him to let go, he tightened his grip; when I wanted him to quiet down, he cackled, loud, like all the years before him, a flock, a murder.
By the time 335 raised her gentle hand, I’ll tell you, it was hard to keep the faith. Her brothers and sisters had rolled and run their way through me like punches, and she was a fragile-looking thing. Figured she’d pass with a whisper and we’d be right back where we started, if she didn’t pass out flat on her face. But when 335 stood to give her toast, I’d never known so much fire. She was gonna do it, she said. Put the schoolhouse walls back up with her bare hands and give me my room, my very own chair. And she certainly tried her hardest, that spitfire 335. Shouted her lungs out all the way to the front door and the screen door, and inside the house too. 277 had been a real doozy, and you should’ve seen the way she grabbed him by the hair and flipped him right over.
I want to say the parties got better from there, 405, but in truth, I don’t know. My 300s pushed and pulled and scrabbled for purchase like limbs in a schoolyard fight, and of course I was the one doing all the bruising. When I turned 400, they almost let me slide on the respect-elders-defense. They even finally agreed to fess up to their failures at that get together. But that’s where they tricked me again, you see, 405? Because 401 came—401, that crazy-eyed, two-faced gator—and knocked it all to the side, shifted me out of orbit, sounded the alarms. And, of course, everybody breathed a sigh of relief when they thought I couldn’t hear over the toast (more of a dozens than a toast, really). They shoved all their pretenses to the side. 400 gave back side eyes as party favors.
But let me hold my tongue, because now you’re here you can bring all those things I’ve been looking for, can’t you? You can get me licensed, 405. Take me to school or take me to work, we can take our pick! Bona fide student or professional without a discourse in sight. Make me joyful sun up to son down. Make me the face of deliriously happy. The spokesperson for go-to-bed-without-a-doubt-in-your-mind-for-the-next-day happy. A no-grudge type of guy and a boss too. Make me Oh captain my captain or whatever at the helm of the whip. I call the shots from now on. Not him, her, them, or that guy working for that-other-guy-who-must-have-tenure-cause-he’s-been-planning-my-years-and my-birthdays-for-so-long, none of that. You can make me the rightful, emancipated adult this time and all times. Come to think of it, you can give me the chance to have the party I never got to celebrate too, how do you like that?
I always did like how the other kids always had their big parties, setting off fireworks every year to celebrate their birthday. If I’m honest, they only invited me out of pity- I think they felt bad and didn’t wanna be accused of “not trying,” maybe their mom made them- and I always thought the thing was a big Uncle Sam sham anyway, but I gotta hand it to ‘em: they know how to plan a party. They pull out all the stops, 405: the colors (just a few of the primary ones), the lights, the smell of that meat on the grill, those struck bells and all the ringing they spit. And though I could never be out that late, it’s the nighttime that really dazzles, 405 (If I can’t watch it on the TV, I read about it in the books they write for their years). Those kids know just how to turn heads. The shots and all the things blown up; it’s memorial and it’s prophetic. And more important, it’s big. It’s enough to really make you sit up and take notice. That birthday never passes undetected, not once.
Is it too much to ask of you, 405, if I say I want our party like that but with our thing going. Let’s get people out line dancing on the White House lawn, 405! Stomping the grass down, spread-eagle up the columns of the Capitol, we’ll clean up later! Or maybe we’ll pay one of the pity invitees to clean it up later. “Have it gone by the morning, please!” Wouldn’t that be a poetic take on justice? The children will come out when it gets really dark and light up the sky me-style. They’ll use sparklers to conjure spirits. On the RSVP we’ll tell everyone not to bring a gift. After what your predecessors got me, I don’t really trust the practice anyway. Just make sure there’s enough good cheer… and maybe BBQ… to go around, and then you can stand up and make a toast, 405. That part’s for you to decide, though, I won’t put ideas in your head.
And after the party, when they see us walking down the street, 405, I want them to say there goes Culture incarnate. “That’s Dr. Culture with a culture so old and so resilient and so its own even Pharoah and Nebuchadnezzar make ‘yr culture so old’ jokes about that one, did you go to that party?” They’ll finally say it like they say it for everyone else when we walk by: with no other way to cheep around it. “What seven wonders? Never heard of ‘em.” We’ll make them say that I had the best food too, 405. Serious miracle food you wouldn’t believe. That I can make anything and turn it into a party with a 5-course menu that just so happens to heal the soul, that’s how good I am in the kitchen. They even saw it and tried it themselves. The dancing I have is the best too, they’ll whisper. It’s infectious, it’s a bug it can’t be kept down just like all the rave gossip. Both spread like the plague from my party, they’ll say. Then I’ll just walk coolly. Don’t let me bother with the reviewers after this: let’s have our shindig be so good that all I hear is applause that I don’t give a damn about anymore because I’m so stupid happy and carefree. I’m too free to care. I “don’t need the stamp of approval,” that’s what they’ll say and it’ll be true.
O.K. look: let me stop before I start rambling and get carried away. You have no way of knowing this, but sometimes I just get so swept up in these things when I’m left to myself. I get to thinking about my standing, my times, and how I just want a party and my mind splits (sometimes you just gotta split, though, don’t I know it, especially when a birthday comes). It’s just that I can’t help but get a good feeling about you, 405. How can I not? There’s so much possibility for us together, so much that I haven’t gotten to do yet. So many ideas brought up and never seen through. So many shots and roads neither taken nor traveled.
Isn’t that a beautiful thing? And I think everyone forgot about us too, 405, so when we show up it’s bound to make waves somewhere, huh? So here’s to that! To possibility for us, 405! I’ll tell you, that’s the kind of thing that keeps a person on their toes; promises made, promises kept; party, no party; not even a bad year can cloud that North Star.
2025