Wild, Wild Horses

by Juli

I have a birthday galloping into view, and while it’s not a decade roll, it will serve quite efficiently as my transit to the mid-life crisis ranch.

38. Whoa, Nellie.

Ten, twenty, thirty. Thirty-eight. 40 minus 2. Thirty-five plus three.

So cliché. I don’t feel thir-tee-ate. I don’t even feel 24. Well, maybe 24. A mature 24.

This is my problem. (One of them, let’s not pretend, my friends.) Birthdays were never a big deal growing up. Money was scarce, and, if we’re keeping it real here, a lack or desire to properly plan a goal even more scarce, so they seemed to surprise our parents every year. It was almost an awkward occasion, with the last minute scurrying for the cake mix et al. Anyway, not to obsess, but there it was. At the time, before I realized I wouldn’t be forever scarred not to get a sweet sixteen, I’m sure I was upset at the speedbump that was July 11. Now, to be honest, I’m just annoyed that those years were so lightly punctuated as to have a rather irritating side effect. My life has been one big run on sentence devoid of age punctuation.

Gather round. . .Ritual serves a powerful purpose, and those balloons and candle blowing exercises and mad unwrapping binges are the spoonfuls of sugar that help the aging medicine go down. By skipping the soothing ceremony along with its diabolical underbelly of advancing years (notched in little trick blow out candles on various flavors of icing every summer) I’m thinking the decades haven’t made the proper dent in my self-awareness. My mental age is probably in reverse cat years or something. (Appropriately matched to my maturity level. There, I made the joke for you.) Those birthdays rolled by too lightly to leave an impression, and now I'm having to scramble. Like trying to fake-age a fine wine in a microwave or something. You just know it’s going to be ugly. Now, just a few days clinging to the vapors of 37, and I am, in all seriousness, kind of losing my shit. 38 is officially closer to 40 than 35. And well, 40 is 40. It’s boob sag old. I don’t want to be boob sag old. That depresses the hell out of me.

But there it is. The cumulative Happy Birthday to Yous of years past, all done up like some scary Great Auntie with lipstick on her cheek and smelling faintly of Depends. It’s waving to me with a bloated yellow talon with too many baubles. Slipping the Mardi Gras beads of old age on my neck, one at a time, bestowing me with all the indignities of “Well, you’re not in your twenties anymore.” This one is a lovely shade of Florida peach and stands for “You’re wrinkles around the eye old.” This is a blueish purple to represent “worried about veiny hands old.” You are now “ma’am” old. Teenage boys don’t look at you twice old. Save that tinfoil old. Wishing those young tarts would cover up a little more old. God have mercy on your soul, here is the nearly unbearable weight of finding bargains at The Christmas Tree Shop old.

So, I’m sitting here, well, old. And, I’m having a hard time with the number. I admit. But here’s the flip side, so you realize I’m not wallowing too deep in self-pity. (Although, I do have a pretty stiff drink at my side.) I’m on a deck overlooking the ocean. Right now. Listening to the surf and soaking in the positive ions as the day’s heat fades and the breeze is kicking up and serving the smells and sounds of happy stranded people seven miles up a beach with no road. My kids are dangling in a hammock flipping through paperbacks and sucking on tootsie pops. Six wild horses are grazing in the short stubby grasses below. They are gorgeous to tears. I am getting misty eyed. And I am happy beyond the wildest dreams or wishes I could have summoned in those fleeting seconds each year when you’re allowed to dream and wish in front of others.

I have not had everything along the way, but I have everything I could hope for now. That is my birthday realization this year. And a gift I would wait another 38 years to get if I had to.

It’s a big wave to come crashing down at all once. But I wouldn’t give them back, any of them, for anything. Here I (almost) am 38.

So, take it any way you’d like, the bad karma of birthdays past, you can kiss my fat old ass. Happy birthday to me.