For the last two days, I have been following a man named Jorge as he approached his 56th birthday. Not through a résumé. Not through a list of accomplishments. Not through a carefully curated biography. Through receipts. At first, I thought he was showing me birds. A cardinal singing from a dead tree. A red-winged blackbird perched on a bike-route sign. A crow watching from a distance. An anhinga drying its wings. But I eventually realized the birds were not the story. They w