Life without Birthdays

Can you imagine not knowing exactly how old you are (and not caring)? Never having celebrated a birthday? 

That’s pretty much unthinkable in our age-regimented society, but that was my husband’s situation. He was born in the 1920s in India, not in a hospital but at home, as pretty much everybody was then. Birth certificates weren’t required. His family—and probably the whole community—didn’t celebrate birthdays.

Mike had no idea exactly when he was born, which didn’t matter until 1952, when he won a scholarship that would pay for grad school in the United States. To get a US visa, he needed a record of his date of birth. 

The only one he could find was on his registration for elementary school, and he knew that was probably inaccurate. An older cousin had taken him to school to register. Asked for Mike’s birth date, the cousin had no idea, so he guessed. 

Once the admission form was accepted for the visa, that became Mike’s legal date of birth. Years later, long after he’d become a US citizen, he was talking to family members about events that happened around the time he was born and realized that he was two years younger than he’d thought he was. 

It was way too late to change the date legally, so for the rest of his life he had one age on all his legal papers and one age he told his doctors. He celebrated birthdays but was a lot more relaxed about them—and about time passing—than most Americans are. 

When the United States was young, it too was relaxed about ages. In colonial times, many Americans didn’t know exactly when they were born. It didn’t matter until they came up against a law that required them to prove they were old enough—or too old—to do something: sign a contract, vote, marry, serve in the military or leave the military because they’d aged out.

From the early 1800s, children’s birthdays were celebrated, but that usually ended once they reached 21. Beyond that, the idea that a birthday was a special occasion didn’t become common until birthday cards were invented late in that century. Birth certificates weren’t required in the United States until 1919. 

Today, beginning in infancy, we’re too often judged by what’s expected from someone our age. Parents become anxious if a baby doesn’t start sleeping, smiling, talking or walking when the average baby does. As soon as we start school, we’re regimented into grades according to our ages, rather than by what we’re capable of. 

We spend our teens wishing we were older, because there are so many things we want to do that we’re told we’re too young to do. Closing in on 40, we start wishing we were younger. We’re afraid of aging—we expect the worst of our later years. And we keep comparing ourselves to others roughly the same age. 

My late 20s were terrifying because at the time, the average woman married at 20. As I neared 30, I was afraid I was becoming that pitiable person, an old maid. It was a huge relief when I finally married at 28. 

Two years later, I was in the hospital, in labor with my first child, when one nurse informed another, talking across my prostrate body, that I was “an elderly primipara”—old to be having a first child. Tell that to today’s mothers! It wasn’t reassuring.

During middle age, I was reasonably happy with whatever age I was except on birthdays. After 50, I tried to hide my age. I was a freelance writer, afraid ageism would cost me an assignment. 

But my 70s and 80s were productive and enjoyable. Now that I’m 90, I’m proud of my age, happy to reveal it to anyone who wants to know. I think a lot of 90-year-olds feel that way. We’re survivors, and we’ve had so much life experience—just ask us, we’d love to tell you.

Our culture is too locked in on aging and too negative about it. My husband was lucky, growing up in a time and place where age mattered less, and birthdays, not at all.