This week I had a birthday. It happens to the best of us. 53 is so inconsequential, I’m embarrassed to even mention it. But despite not wanting to dwell, I do have a few birthday wishes. Nothing crazy, just some things that popped into my head when I woke up.

For starters, I’d like gravity to leave my ass alone. It’s bad enough I sit for hours on end, trying to write something worth reading. I don’t need the planet’s central, invisible force pulling on it all day, coaxing it to droop towards earth. Yeesh! Can someone please send an anti-gravity seat cushion?

On the subject of anti — what I really need is an anti-hot flash serum. Not hormone replacement therapy so much as a spell and a magic wand. Presto! You’re cool again! Traditional doctors seem to suggest, “oh calm down sweetie, you’ll get through it,” but this menopause thing is real. I mean I’m not wearing a shirt right now and I’m still sweating.

Did I say sweating? I know my friends in LA are like, honey, Bostonians have no idea what sweating is, we passed 105 degrees last week. Drought, floods, fires, hurricanes, mudslides — what more does Mother Nature have to do to get people to pay attention? So for my birthday, I wish it would cool down in LA and dry up in Pakistan. I wish big nations would learn to work together and civilians would listen to science. And rather than bunkers and rocket ships, I really wish billionaires would pour all that money into building next-generation energy, water and food sources and inventing plastic and lumber substitutes that don’t harm the planet. Although it feels like it, it may not be too late. I wish we could all stay here on earth rather than escape to space, and care for what we’ve ravaged.

The first launch of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket at the Kennedy Space Center. Elon Musk spent over $100 million to get the company started in 2002. Photo: Bill Jelen

Speaking of inventions, there are a few inventions I’d like to wish for on behalf of my daughters. I’d give my right eye for someone to design an alert that would go off anytime a celebrity or influencer deploys extreme filters, lighting or plastic surgery in their photos, so these girls can stop comparing themselves to fakes and finding themselves lacking. Please tell every girl you know that she’s perfect.

I’d give my left eye for a mammography machine that doesn't leave my body feeling like a shattered mess of bones scattered across the hospital parking lot. I guess that would make me blind, but if those two came true it would be worth it.

I have some other wishes for them too: simple things like, can they please earn as much as their male colleagues for doing the same job? It doesn’t seem like too much to ask.

And make it easy for them (and all women in this country) to get birth control whenever they want it, wherever they need it, so that they do not suffer unwanted pregnancies. But if they do have an unplanned pregnancy, I wish for them to have access to SAFE and LEGAL abortions because last I checked we’re talking about THEIR bodies and ONLY THEY should decide how to take care of them. I wish I didn’t have to ask for something they had, just a few months ago. Lawmakers and judges, you hear what I’m saying, right? Stop being cowards and morons, and stop sending us backwards so we have to fight the same fights women have been fighting for generations, all over again.

Hey Justice Department, I have a birthday wish for you too: do your job. Lock criminals up! Especially former presidents and their posses who have, time and time again, lied to, stolen from, assaulted, disparaged, cheated, profited off of and disrespected the people who voted for them, as well as those who didn’t vote for them or didn’t vote at all. That is, everyone. Lock em up!

*Education Week* has been tracking school shootings since 2018. In the U.S. we had 34 last year, 10 in 2020, and 24 each in 2019 and 2018. (https://www.edweek.org/leadership/school-shootings-this-year-how-many-and-where/2022/01)

It’s back to school season, so obviously I’d like a shooting-free school year for all children, even the ones who live in Texas where lawmakers actually loosened gun laws after shootings in El Paso and Odessa, paving the way for what happened in Uvalde. But until we get rid of all the greed and fear and isolationism in Congress I know that is not a wish anyone can grant. So instead, I wish for better metal detectors and security protocols and locks on classroom doors.

I would like school librarians to be able to do their jobs without extremist, misinformed parent groups banning books and scaring kids and pretending history will rewrite itself if the truth is burned, deported, silenced and ignored. I wish people would read instead of listening to propaganda on social media, so many things would be better if they did.

A few other tiny things:

I hope everyone who adopted a dog during the pandemic will take care of it forever.

I hope my 14 year old dog will live to be 100. But if he’s royal and regal until 96 like the Queen, well, I’d be okay with that.

My dog and I both wish cycling clubs would stop wearing professional team kits because guys — you're NOT on the Italian racing team and you’re in my lane.

But I also wish more people would ride their bikes to work, because in addition to everything else, we still have an obesity crisis in this country.

So I wish all districts would provide healthy, nutritious school lunches whether students live in a suburb or an inner city or a rural farming town.

That’s it for now. There’s only so long I can hold my breath leaning over the cake.

My mom visiting me at work for my birthday in 2019.

Once a year we get to make outrageous wishes, imagining what life would be like if they came true. It’s like writing stories - you dream up the ending you want.

But these wishes don’t seem outrageous at all. They seem like common sense (okay maybe not the anti-gravity seat): respect and care for others; respect and care for the planet; respect and care for yourself.

One more wish: I hope by the time I blow out my candles next year, I won’t have to hold my breath for so long.