My Birthday

This coming Saturday I will turn thirty-five. Which anyone whose anyone knows means you are no longer in your early thirties. Now I realize in the grand scheme of things, thirty-five is young-ish. Not a huge deal. Or as one of my very best friends would say ‘that ain’t nothing but a chicken wing’. So it shouldn’t be bothering me - especially since I’ve looked thirty-five since I was about eighteen. But it is. It really, really is.
Thirty-five feels as though I should ’be’ somewhere. Maybe solid or something. Dependable. With back-ups of linens and good cutlery. And a library - yes, someone who is thirty-five should definitely have a library in their home as opposed to piles of paperbacks under their bed. Possibly even a fireplace too. I think if I were being graded on life - and I really wish there was a grading system to follow to give one an idea about successes, failures, choices and such - I would be pulling about a C-. Or a C plus. Depending on how much emphasis is put on a self-deprecating sense of humour. And I would definitely get points for my sunny sensibility.
But do you know what I want for my birthday (other than a Vespa, of course)? I want to drop my ‘game face’ for one day. Let go of the sunny sensibility. For just one darn day. I want to take every dark, depressing crappy thought that I keep hidden in the tiniest pocket of my mind out for a good polish. Just ruminate in self-pity. Feel completely and luxuriously just plain sorry for myself. So happy birthday to me then - and to all of you, sort of. You now get to share in my great big old rainy day of melancholy.
Let’s get started, shall we? First of all, I really hate these stupid ‘milestone’ birthdays. They just never work out for me in any way, shape or form. I always end up feeling like the only girl in my group not invited to prom. Wait - except for my nineteenth birthday. That one (from what I’ve heard) was legendary. Sort of a pity I can only remember about seventeen minutes of it. All of the other ones, though…not so much.
For instance there was my sweet sixteen. I had spent months - years even - memorizing ‘Sixteen Going On Seventeen’ from the Sound of Music. ‘Sixteen Candles’ was my favourite movie. I had circled a few used cars in my dad’s Auto Trader just in case. Not that I expected a car or anything but it’s always nice to be well-informed, right? Do you want to know what we did? We went camping. Just me, my brothers and my parents (who incidentally got to sleep in the camper while I slept in a tent beside my explosively gassy brothers). My birthday dinner was some KFC and a candle melting in a fly ridden banana cream pie. With a can of warm diet coke. No dancing in the gazebo with Rolph before he became a Nazi. No pretty pink dress. Just mosquito bites and a wet tent. Sweet.
Then there was my twenty-first. All I can say about that one is this - my friends all had a drunken, raucous good time. I sipped iced tea in the corner, rubbing my pregnant belly. Not fun.
Which brings us to my thirtieth. Which was the weekend after I left my husband. It almost completely passed me by as I packed and cried and bought myself a present that I pretended was from him. My mother took me out for crab cakes and chardonnay the next day, a tense afternoon while we both tried to avoid discussing the huge elephant in the room. Of course I didn’t hear from a single friend because, at that point, I didn’t have a single friends. Saying ‘divorce’ was sort of like yelling ‘stampede!’. I didn’t feel thirty - I felt sixty.
Okay, that’s it. Enough. I’ve changed my mind. I don’t really feel like feeling sorry for myself any more. After all, there’s pretty much no way this birthday can be worse than any of those, right? So what if I have to bake my own cake, make my own dinner, buy my own presents (don’t ask)? This is the first year the boys will all be home, thank goodness. I’m sure I can bully them into being thoughtful. Plus, I can spend the day counting my blessings. Hilarious, cool kids, a few choice loyal friends, a snug little house that I love, shiny hair and all of my teeth. And a job that pays me to complain about my life every week! Life is pretty darn good, I’d say. Or at least, good enough.