Birthdays

I turn 27 tomorrow. Birthdays have always had a strange effect over me. I think it's the very concrete notion of change- even though nothing ever really changes, at least not within the few hours from going to one year to the next. Yet, just knowing I am one year older, one year further away or closer to what-ever, leaves me feeling unsettled.

One of my favorite short stories is "Eleven" by Sandra Cisneros. In it she writes, "What they don't understand about birthdays and what they never tell you is that when

you're eleven, you're also ten, and nine, and eight, and seven, and six, and five, and four,

and three, and two, and one...

Because the way you grow old is kind of like an onion or like the rings inside a tree trunk

or like my little wooden dolls that fit one inside the other, each year inside the next one.

That's how being eleven years old is."

So here I am, on the cusp of turning 27, but all of my other years are still nestled inside of me. As a writer I always seem to go back to my sixteenth year and the time I spent in the coffee house in Belmar. Or when I was eighteen, ready to leave for college, feeling like I was already gone, and the hours thinking, staring at the ocean.

I read a poem with my class the other day. The poet said something about writing about the time in your life that was the vividest. Could that be those years I spent trying to figure out who I was and where I belonged? In memory, they always seem black and white, sepia toned and washed out. What about now?

Now. It seems sometimes between working, worrying about money, taking care of a home, trying to rush the next stages, that I loose sight of who I am. Overly emotional, overly sensitive, creative, loving... I need to paint this time, make it vivid.

Where does happiness fit in?

This is my happiness journey. The changes I fear are now the ones I want to embrace. I don't know where the next years will take me and the unknown is unsettling. But there's comfort in knowing that my sixteenth year is still inside me, like the rings inside a tree trunk, helping to shape the years to come.