Happy Birthday

Today is my birthday. I’m 51. I don’t look it. I say that with more relief than ego, though anyone who knows me realizes just how relieved my ego actually is. When people who don’t know me, learn my age, they usually ask in amazement, how I look as young as I do. I tell them, honestly, I don’t really know. My parents both looked very young well into their 50’s. My grandmother, at 94, has few wrinkles. I have always taken good care of myself and I truly believe that my children and the love I’m given by my husband contribute heavily to whatever youthful countenance I possess. I stay out of the sun and use good moisturizing products, drink lots of water, exercise, blah, blah, blah.
Plus, I told God, years ago, after all the shit He allowed to happen in my life the least He could do was keep my face and body intact. People say The Almighty doesn’t make deals and probably doesn’t appreciate swearing, but I disagree. He’s used to my mouth and he damn well knows what I’ve been through better than anyone else. He’s doing me a solid, that’s all.
Do you want to know what I believe the real fountain of youth is? Being able to roll with it. Reinvention. The ability to welcome change and live in each and every moment.
On Thanksgiving, one of my sweet cousins, whose two youngest children are around the ages of my two youngest, expressed her bewilderment at the passage of time and how swiftly her children had grown. I saw the same look on her face that I know has played on mine. A mixture of grief and wonderment. Pride in who her children are and sadness in that they are no longer who they were. My heart ached for her – and for myself.
In the next breath we were talking about how we want to shape our lives, our careers from here on out. Life is not stagnant and neither are we. It’s not about youth. It’s about living and being true to oneself in any given moment.
I hear every day about how bad things are in the world. I know all about that. “Those things,” people talk about. The, “I don’t know what I’d do if that happened to me,” things. Lots of them have happened. To me. To those I love. Sometimes when I look back at the events of which I speak, I picture myself doing a tuck and roll through a mine field. I can laugh at some of what took place. Other parts, decades later, make me weep with sadness, frustrated still, about my inability to have prevented or at least controlled one situation or another. I was stupid here, naïve there. Selfish that time? Too young to know better? Who knows? Shit happens and that which does not kill us makes us stronger, right? There are a few times I just wished it had killed me.
And maybe it did. At least a part of me.
What has lived on is some sort of intrinsic strength and belief in the goodness in the universe. Some kind of perpetual stubbornness that is tied up in positivity and light, that, when combined with the twisted sense of humor I inherited from my Scots/Irish grandfather, shines through and twinkles in my eyes – as long as I’ve had enough sleep and use my allergy eye drops.
Look, I’m an old soul. Like many, I’ve been beaten and battered and loved and adored. I give and I take and I try to give again.
Eventually, my looks will fade, I realize. But my face is not who I am.
Neither is 51.
Bring on the years. The moments. The life.
I can take them – and so can my facial products.
Happy Birthday.
To me.