Thoughts of death on a birthday

I don’t acknowledge birthdays. Seems frivolous at best; haunting at worst. But making an exception for 75, which is a fair milestone, one I’ve been lucky to reach.

Why haunting? My birth date — March 10, 1945 — always conjures up the Bob Dylan lyric, “He not busy being born is busy dying.” While I was busy being born in a safe, clean Chicago suburban hospital, 100,000 Japanese civilians were being incinerated under more than 1,500 tons of napalm bombs dropped on Tokyo by B-29 bombers. A million were left homeless. American airmen donned their oxygen masks at low altitude to ward off the smell of burning flesh.

It was the deadliest air raid in history, a dubious distinction I cannot separate from my entrance to life. It always emerges from my psyche upon awakening to mark another birthday.

I learned about it early on, staring in horror at pictures of the man-made firestorm devouring one of the world’s largest cities. The book was “Life’s Picture History of World War II.” I reviewed it cover to cover at about age 7, likely the first such book I did. The Cold War was raging. McCarthy was rampaging. I feared a similar fate awaited me from nuclear Armageddon. Still do. The doomsday clock is a hundred ticks from midnight, the closest in my life. That is not progress.

I resented “duck and cover,” sticking my head under the desk in grade school to survive an imaginary atomic attack. I came to realize it was better to go on with your head high, learning and loving and laughing, than cowering before the inevitable. That may be the most important lesson I learned in my 75 years. Onward to 76. — Walt Zlotow, Glen Ellyn