Editor’s note: This was intended to be post on February 8th.
Tomorrow is my 39th birthday. When the hell did this happen and who stole my thirties?
On the eve of my 29th birthday I was in a sleep-deprived haze, a small infant permanently attached to my nipple. It occurred to me then that I had only one year left where I could justifiably use immaturity, inexperience, or the recklessness associated with youth as an excuse for any questionable behavior. Hell, the infant at my breast was already a startling reminder that if I had any last wild child ways in me, I best get a move on it or suffer the raised eyebrows of the thirty-something moms on the playground.
Well, as it turns out, I had nothing to mourn in my 29th year. My thirties have been filled with more turmoil, more risks, more rabble-rousing, heartbreaking and life changing experiences than any other decade since puberty. And so, on the eve of my 39th birthday, while I don't share the same sense of panic I did a decade ago, I do not fully embrace the moniker of "forty-something", just on the horizon. There is, indeed, something frightening about experiencing a birthday you distinctly remember your own parents celebrating. It was 1983 when my mother turned thirty-nine and I was an awkward thirteen year-old silently wishing that David Skaleki would make eye contact with me in Spanish class. Now it is 2008 and my nine-year-old daughter is silently wishing I’ll stop trying to make eye contact with her and ask about her school day. I’d like to tell you I have experienced great growth emotionally between then and now, and on a good day, I can see some progress in myself. Yet, if I am to be perfectly honest, I can tell you the reality is. in many ways. I am 39, going on 13. I still care way too much what people think, though, I have made progress. It used to be everyone’s opinion I cared about. Now it’s just the opinion of those I know, love and admire. Will my forties bring an era of such complete self-knowledge and security that I do not need the blessing, admiration or benediction of anyone outside my self? I can only hope.
Now, in between school lunches and book fairs and parent teacher conferences and spin classes and relationship struggles and internal battles and fights about money and sex and power and piano lessons, books read aloud, essays not finished, jobs not found and the whole, messy, exhilarating, lot of my life— I will blow out my candles and be grateful for it all.
