So I turned 32 last week, and as much as I hate to admit it, I’ve reached an age where days before my birthday, I have to calculate what age I’ll be turning by subtracting the year I was born from the current one. As in, 2010-1978=32! I don’t even have to right down the math either. I can just do it in my head because I’m an accountant.
This birthday really was a good one. We celebrated by pawning the kids off on to my parents and going to dinner and a movie. When Ken and I were dating, I would have considered this to have been the most generic date night combo, but it’s funny what nine years of marriage and two kids can do to your romantic scale. I just wanted to be out of the house and eat a meal without having to negotiate how many bites had to be eaten before somebody could get up from the table. And if I didn’t have to listen to a whiney toddler fussing because he was being contained in a high chair, well now, that’s a happy birthday.
We slept in late on Saturday morning, and I didn’t get out of the bed until noon. Of course, I was awake at 7:00 because apparently my internal mommy alarm clock is programmed to wake at that time whether kids are in the house or not, but I spent the morning lying around, watching TV, reading, and NOT cleaning anything.
Eventually we got up and went to the lake to visit with my family. My brother and his girls were there, along with the kids and my folks, and we spent the rest of the afternoon playing on the water. It really was a fun day, and it might actually make me want to turn another year older…which is saying a lot these days.
I’ve begun to notice a trend as my birthday approaches, and when I say it, I know it’s just going to make me sound that much older. But for the first week of June, I’ve noticed that I get a bit touchy. Maybe “snippy” is a good word for it, and not just when someone mentions my looming birthday, but in general.
When I think about my birthday, it’s just a reminder that I’m not sixteen anymore, even though, I feel sixteen inside my head. Well, okay, maybe, twenty-one, but definitely NOT thirty-two and married with two kids. I remember my mom saying something similar to me when I really was sixteen, and since I knew everything back then, I thought it was an idiotic thing for her to say. And now, here I am, coming full circle, struggling with the same thought. Am I really a grown-up? How did this happen? When did it happen? I blame Ken because he has always been an old man trapped inside a much younger looking body, and I think his old person tendencies have begun to wear off on to me. I already know what his comeback would be to that statement. I still maintain that I go to bed early because I have to get up early with the kiddos, and it has nothing to do with my age.
The truth is I wish my age didn’t bother me, but it does. I haven’t gotten to the roots as to why that is yet, but since it bothers most people past a certain point, I really don’t feel all that alone. Hopefully I won’t become one of those women that insists they’re still twenty-nine because I’m still young enough to find that silly, but then again, there once was a time I thought my mom was just as crazy for feeling the way I do now, so who knows.
