What were you doing at 17? I would wager that most readers of this column weren’t winning a soccer European Championship with their country, unless the Spanish wunderkind Lamine Yamal has suddenly subscribed to the Bryan County News. I certainly wasn’t doing anything remarkable at that age, beyond making dozens of family Whatsapp phone calls and playing ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” on repeat while driving up to Athens for a college visit.
Time flies when you’re having fun–or going through a global pandemic. One day, I was a rising high school senior seriously itching to leave Savannah and then I blinked and suddenly I’m now the upstart managing editor of a small-town-that-isn’t really that-small-anymore newspaper.
Readers, where has the time gone?
This week on Tuesday I turned 23, although twenty three years ago my birthday fell on a Monday. I like to think that sums up my personality–I walk and talk like a ‘Monday’ baby, a total square.
Every year without fail, my mom loves to regale me with the harrowing yet ultimately hunky-dory tale of how the sudden onset of placenta previa forced her into undergoing an emergency C-section at St. Joseph’s/ Candler (‘What happened next, Mom?
Did I survive?,’ I always like to jokingly ask towards the end).
Lucky for me, both of us survived the blood-soaked ordeal safe and sound, although my brother–who was 7 at the time– was only really concerned about eating more of the free hospital Jell-O.
My mother, the ever-devout Catholic woman she is, always gives thanks to the Virgin Mary for keeping her and me well during her delivery that Monday evening.
You see, your esteemed editor was born on the Catholic feast day of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, who is the patron saint of the Order of the Brothers of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel, also known as the Carmelites for short (thank goodness for that, because that name is long as heck to type out).
According to the website franciscanmedia.org, the Carmelite Order was founded in the 12th century by religious hermits who lived on Mount Carmel, a coastal mountain range in northern Israel. (My birthday being associated with hermits is another foreshadowing of my boring Monday personality). On Mount Carmel, the hermits had a chapel dedicated to Mary, which is where the Mary association comes from. For centuries onward, the Carmelites have seen themselves as specially related to Mary.
St. Teresa of Ávila, the saint I chose for my confirmation, was a Carmelite nun herself and is well-known for her writings on Christian mysticism and the importance of prayer and contemplation. I remember choosing her in religion class because I wanted to pick a woman writer, and also because ten other girls already picked St.
Elizabeth Ann Seton so the onus was on me to be more original.
Popular devotion to Our Lady of Mount Carmel focuses on her brown scapular, which is a kind of apron worn by religious people like monks. Legend has it that the Blessed Virgin appeared to early Carmelite leader Simon Stock, an English Catholic priest born in some place called Aylesford, Kent (I’m sure Lesley Francis knows where it is), and gave him a scapular. For the Carmelites, wearing a brown scapular signifies devotion to Mary and a recognition of her special protection over the Order.
(I’m rambling on and on about saints and priests because a friend of my mom wished me happy birthday over the phone on Tuesday and proceeded to ask if I had a boyfriend. At that moment, I wished the hermits from Mount Carmel would swoop in and try to save me with a job application.)
Growing up, I was often told by teachers and relatives that I was “mature” for my age, which at the ripe age of 23 seems to manifest itself in the form of sending and answering emails during my company-sponsored paid time off. (Sorry, Mark!) I also spent my birthday getting my nails done, shopping for cake, candles, and non-alcoholic beer at Publix, and taking one too many corny selfies with my dad, who funnily enough is more obsessed with goofy Snapchat filters than I am.
Do I feel happy? That’s a good question.
So much of life is a rat race nowadays, with LinkedIn driving me bonkers with notifications of classmates-of-friends-of- a-friend-whom-I-met- at-a football-game who all seem to be more professionally secure than I am–that is, if you define “professionally secure” as “tasked to cover and catalog endless election season shenanigans in order to inform an audience who probably has already moved on to whining about a new romance pairing in ‘Bridgerton’.”
So no, I don’t exactly envy my peers in that regard. To paraphrase the theme song of ‘Cheers’, it feels pretty good to not work at some big gray news corp and instead work at a place ‘where everybody knows your name’. But sometimes I do feel like there are some hidden milestones I need to reach, as if my early twenties were some ‘Legend of Zelda’ video game filled with sidequests and secret prizes that cooler, more attractive people are achieving more readily. Folks on my Instagram feed are getting married and traveling the world; I’m still in my childhood bedroom blasting Marina’s “Love + Fear” in my eardrums in an effort to drown out the sound of my dad mowing the backyard lawn before it rains again.
(My mom came back from Colombia two weeks ago, and she told me that it rained every day she was there. I’m starting to wonder if she brought the rain with her. At least the rain over there cools you down a bit–nothing of the sort happens here in good ol’ humid southeast Georgia).
But this week I aim to remind myself that there’s nothing to worry about or rush to; age is just a number, and there is always something to look forward to in every year of life. After all, Jesús Navas, the Spanish right-back, also was in the soccer squad that won the continental championship on Sunday, and he is a whopping 38 years old. That’s literally ancient. (My co-worker Mark, who is nearing the U.S. age of retirement, will no doubt roll his eyes at my casual ageism).
It’s truly a blessing to live an average, normal life. This year, my birthday wish is that I get better at enjoying mine.
Looking to the future never seem to make you happy / Took you from reality, yeah, yeah / Imagining the worst like it’s gonna end so badly, yeah, yeah / sit back and enjoy your problems (Oh) you don’t always have to solve them / (Yeah) ‘cause your worst days, they are over So enjoy your life / (Mmm) yeah you might as well accept it (Oh) don’t you waste your time regretting / (Yeah) ‘cause your worst days, they are over So enjoy your life Marina, “Enjoy your life” (2019)
Let nothing disturb you, nothing surprise you, all things pass; God does not change. Patience wins everything; whoever holds onto God lacks nothing; God alone is enough.
St. Teresa of Ávila, (1515-1582)
Andrea Gutierrez is the editor of the Bryan County News.