THIS IS 45

It seems that I am always willing to celebrate birthdays of others over my own. It is never because I dread growing another year older. It is always because of history. I have one and some of those dates in my historical timeline are rough. Last year, I received a Visa card full of money from some random car settlement thing. Our plan was to use that money for a spa day in celebration of my birthday. I was going to spend the day getting a massage and a facial. I was going to sit in a steam room and soak in mineral waters. I was going to scrub my skin with artisanal body scrubs and then sit in the steam room some more. Because of scheduling, we could not get into the spa until some time in April. Well, we all know what was happening by April. My spa day birthday celebration was cancelled. I turned my bathroom into a steam room and put a Biore strip on my face. I scrubbed my skin with plain old sea salt and olive oil. Then I used the Visa card money to replace my iPad and gave the Cabbage my old one.

The previous year, Michael took me out to dinner. It would have been a nice intimate evening for the two of us with the exception of the fifty other restaurant patrons yelling at one of the five TV screens strategically placed around the restaurant. We lost that game, but the next year we won that game. The city went crazy. Fountains were died red. Union Station was lit up in red. The whole city was red. The Chiefs won the Super Bowl and the city exploded with fireworks. We had a big parade and then the city went into lockdown for the pandemic. This year looks very much like last year except we are all still in a pandemic. The Chiefs will play the Buffalo Bills in the NFL Conference Championship this weekend and this city is preparing for the win and dreaming of Super Bowl fairies. Living in a city with it’s very own NFL team is interesting and exciting, even if you’re not a sports ball fan. I will say that I think Patrick Mahomes, the Chiefs’ quarterback, is a fine young gentleman.

On Monday, Michael took me on a hunt to find macarons. We called three different places. The first two places both responded with “Do you mean French macarons?” I didn’t realize there were any other kind. The third place, The French Market, said that yes, indeed they had macarons. I mean, you can’t very well call yourself The French Market if you don’t have macarons in your market. So Michael took me there, where I picked out a dozen little colorful meringue cookies. I ate two of them for breakfast on Tuesday. I might eat the rest of them today for lunch. On Friday or Saturday, we will get sushi from Bob’s Wasabi. We will sit in the truck in the parking lot and eat sushi off of the trays we purchased for turning our vehicle into a restaurant. I can taste the unagi now.

I am tempted to say that this year is not much different from previous birthdays. Except that’s not really true. I am entering age forty five with a new body and a reluctant mind. My life, on many days, feels like floating in a lazy river and this where the reluctance comes in. My mind is still struggling with the idea of floating and often I have to cling to my floating device to keep myself from jumping off and swimming against the current. The pace of life these days is quite different and it has been different for a while now. I am reluctant to get used it because eventually I know that this pace is going to pick up. I don’t want to get used to a slower pace when tomorrow or the next day or the next, that pace is going to speed back up to ‘normal’. I am entering age forty five with the realization that there is no such thing as ‘normal’ and that feels almost unsettling. At least it is unsettling until I remind myself that my previous state of ‘normal’ is the one I created for myself. I create my own idea of normal. I have a list of things I want to normalize in regards to me. Things like outward expression of feelings and emotions or releasing that death grip on my floating device and sometimes getting up to swim against the current. Because swimming against currents is my normal. It is what I do. It is who I am.

So here’s what forty five looks for me. It looks like a woman who has stopped trying to change herself. I am not ‘working’ on myself to be something I am not. Instead I am just doing the best I can to be the best version of me.