Tomorrow is my birthday.
I’ll be 62.
And yes, it is also my father’s birthday.
Ironically.
Not ironically.
Kismet.
Habit.
A cosmic joke we’ve both been in on since the first day I opened my lungs and learned the sound of his name.
It is all I’ve ever known, sharing a birthday with a man like him.
And this year, as we all know, the birthday came with teeth.This year was very difficult for both of us.
Me and my father.
Two birthdays. One weather system. Climate change is absolutely real.
He almost died while I was sitting in Bali, on the other side of the world. I was waking up to roosters and temple smoke and offerings arranged like tiny prayers in palm-leaf trays. He was intubated in a hospital outside Baltimore, tethered to machines, his breath being borrowed. I was on the phone with my sisters doing the sacred arithmetic of panic: the shoulds and coulds and woulds.
Then I made a decision that still feels like the only one I could make.
I decided to live my life way out loud.
I decided to wake each morning and bow and pray to the Bali gods and goddesses in the best way I have been taught. I decided to place my hands on my own chest and hold my father’s heart in mine like it was an instrument I could keep tuned through devotion.
Because his heart is my own.
Let’s be honest.
I am not being poetic. I am being literal in the only language my body trusts.
Isn’t that what we do, ultimately?
We keep each other’s hearts beating. No matter where we are.
Isn’t that what love is?
One beat here. One beat there.
One beat in this chest answering a beat in that chest.
Call and response.
A long-distance holy communion. Take this beat. I’ll give you mine.
I can feel it even now.
His heart has a way of announcing itself.
Sometimes it wakes me up in the middle of the night like a knock at the door. Sometimes I stop short in the middle of a busy intersection and forget the world has cars. Sometimes I stop dancing and just stare off into space because the beating gets so loud I have to listen.
Sometimes I have to just stop.
Because the beat is bigger than the moment I’m in.
Badump. Badump. Badump. Wait for it….Badump.
One beat here.
One beat there.
Way over there.
Wherever he is.
It isn’t easy sharing a birthday with a man who lives his life so loudly, so gregariously, so unapologetically. A man who has always taken up space as if space was created specifically to be taken up. A man who can turn a room into a story just by walking into it with that half-cocked grin.
The encyclopedia could probably use his photograph, worn and tattered and sepia toned, under the definition of: life lived beyond the edges. Full of hell. Full of laughter. Full of trouble. Full of impossible charm.
This little nut did not fall far from that tree.
This is the part where I refuse to make myself small.
Because tomorrow is not just my father’s birthday.
It is mine, too.
I made it to 62.
I made it here with my own two feet and my off-key singing and my insistence on showing up again and again and again. I made it here with love in my fists. I made it here with my heart out where people can see it, which is a dangerous way to live, but it is the only way I know. I walk into the fire, never away from it.
I have marched.
I have fussed.
I have fought for what’s right.
I have loved people so hard it felt like my ribs were going to crack open and let the light out.
I am still here.
So, Albert. Happy birthday to you, you CRAZY (all caps) beautiful human.
I mean it with all the love. With all the heartbeats. Every single one. Mine, too. Badump!
Here we are again, for another spin around the sun.
I can’t even believe it.
I really am so grateful.
Two birthdays.
One world.
Two wild hearts.
One echo.
Tomorrow, if you’re reading this, pause for a second.
Put your hand on your chest.
Feel your own drum.
Notice the beat that has carried you through every single thing you thought might take you out.
Then go live your life out loud.
Keep someone’s heart beating, if you can.
Let them keep yours.
One beat here. One beat there.
Badump.
xo
Nakedjen
P.S. Why today? Because Sundance. It’s basically my birthday party, my church, and my annual emotional car wash. I’m volunteering (!!!) and will be in Park City for the duration starting today, so I’m kicking the celebration off early and holding the bittersweet right alongside the glitter.
NAKEDJEN 