I just turned 53 years old. Where has the time gone? Where
have I been all my life? How did I get here?
Turn around and I was 10. Turn around and I was 21. Turn
around and I was 40. Turn around and here I am, not yet on the high side of 50
and yet feeling as if haven’t yet begun to know who I am.
I was born the day before Halloween and as a kid; my birthdays
always were full of spooky celebrations with my girlfriends.
We would sit in
the dark and pass around bowls of cold spaghetti, peeled grapes, jiggle Jell-O,
and all manner of other pseudo body parts that my mom had cooked up and
prepared for us giggly sorts to sink our fingers into and tell ghost stories
about until we were creeped out. It
was gross. It was so much fun.
Then, my mom would top it all off with a birthday cake that to
this day, is bar none my favorite of all time. I saw it on my birthday ever
year as a child from as far back as I can remember until I was probably 12
years old.
Those same birthday
cakes each year rate above the super awesome “death by chocolate” birthday cake
my mom makes for me today—and not because they tasted better. Believe me, the
“death by chocolate” birthday cake is among my version of chocolate principles
to live by.
It had a new Barbie doll standing in
the middle of an inverted sponge cake that billowed outward and was decorated
like Barbie’s party dress. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen and
best of all; the Barbie was mine when all the cake was gone.
Inside the cake, my mom had hidden ten-cent pieces wrapped in
wax paper. Magically we all managed to find a dime in our piece of cake. It was
amazing and I, for one, felt rich.
When I was growing up I heard stories of how when I was one
year old, I put my face in my birthday cake. Plunk. Just like that. Oh, the
undeniable free spirit of the young at heart.
When I turned 18, while sitting around the dining table with
my family and friends celebrating my day . . . Plunk. Just like that. Now that
was funny.
Between my 24th and 30th birthday (the
“having kids” years) my birthdays were usurped by diapers and drool. I had made
a plan to have all my children born before my 30th birthday. I just
made it. Daughter #3 was born seven days before I turned 30. Whew.
Then suddenly it was 2000, I was turning 40, and I wanted to
stop the world and celebrate what was sure to be my best year yet. I don’t have
to look very far to see a bald reminder of that Halloween birthday party. One
of my friends shaved his head for his “The Rock” Dwayne Johnson costume and has
never since grown it back.
And then suddenly it is 2013 and I’m 53. Where has the time
gone? Where have I been all my life? How did I get here?
I still have my Barbie dolls in a box. I still love birthday
cake, especially “death by chocolate” cake.
And yet I wonder where am I going and what does my future hold
as I wake up each morning to be this woman who is learning new things about
herself every day?
Some of it I like. Some of it I don’t.
But what the heck.
I think I will make my life my cake and jump in. Plunk. Just
like that.
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