35?!? Are you kidding me?!?

Today is my birthday. I turn 35. This means that I can no longer claim that I’m “in my early 30′s”. I am halfway to 70 years old. I’m just a few short years away from (GASP!) FORTY YEARS OLD!

Most of me is very excited and the remaining part of me is manic, as I try to get my head around my mini mid-life crisis. When you turn 30, you are so excited to get your 20’s out of the way because you know that everything about your life is about to change. Then 5 years later you think, “what the Hell just happened?”.

Turning 35 is like a check point, where your mind goes reverse and you start rifling through that “list” you made when you were 25 of all the things you wanted to do and see, where you’d hoped to be in life and with your career, love, marriage and kids etc etc etc and check check check.

I have to be honest. I woke up not wanting to be 35. I wanted to stay 34 forever or at least just get me through these next 5 years and straight to 40 “for the best years of my life”.

Some of you reading this are probably not understanding, but wait until you get to 35 and when you do, you’ll think of me - It will hit you like a ton of bricks. Even though I am truly and honestly the happiest I’ve ever been, I woke up this morning in shock and a little dazed and confused - Oh crap there is really no turning back from adulthood.

Not only am I in the next age bracket (no longer 25-34.....but now 35-49 --eep) but where does the time go? It may just be me, but when you are a teenager there is nothing you want more than to be older. When you become older, all you want is to find some more “time”.

I’m still in denial, I think I can find some “time” hiding underneath a rock or perhaps in the places where the lost socks go. If any of you happen to find some more “time” just laying around, can you please pass some along my way?

It took me about a half hour to get over my mini mid-life crisis mode and I realized, life isn’t so bad. I have to accept that fact that my body is not what it use to be (but it's getting closer hee hee) and that I might be experiencing peri-menopause shortly. But I am in the best place right now, surrounded by the best people.

So here’s to being 35. Growing old is a mandatory process and there is no point in trying to resist the changes.

Mine

(For full effect, all italics must be read in a munchkin voice.)

I love you, buddy. I'm glad you're mine.

But what if I wasn't?

I would make you mine.

What if I was somebody else's?

Then I would steal you.

But what if they had laser beams?

Then I would hold up a mirror so the laser beams would shoot back at them.

But what if they shot out spikes that would break the glass?

(silence.)

I'm not sure. I might have to get back to you on that one.

(more silence.)

But what if I was an alien with suction cups? Then you could have me. And what if you were made of metal? Then I could stick to you. Couldn't I?

Couldn't I, Mama?

Yep. You could.

I love you, Mama.

Love you, too, Monkey.

Rolling Around My Brain Today

Sometimes when I see parents with little girls I feel a twinge of envy. I wonder what it would be like. I project dreams and expectations for my own life's do-over onto a little girl with messy hair and striped tights and a dirty dress.

But then I see a mother five years my senior laughing over lunch in a hospital cafeteria with her teenage boys and my heart swells, threatening to burst at the seams, spilling flashes of my future out onto my lap.

Gratitude

Too often it takes trauma and tragedy to force us to look at our lives with fresh eyes. To re-prioritize. To let go of the little things and to show our love and gratitude daily. I wish we could just remember to do those things on our own, but we easily get swept away by the daily and weekly issues that loom larger than life in our short-sighted vision.

We seize on the differences in opinions or philosophies or beliefs and we inflate them to a size disproportionate to their importance. We get hung up on the unmarked bumps and detours in our days.

But there is SO.MUCH. to be thankful for. So much to appreciate, to marvel at, to sing praise for.
And I don't want it to take grief and sadness to remind me of just how lucky and blessed I am.
I've been thinking about this a lot lately. Over the last couple of years, too many of my most-loved people have been drop-kicked by pain and suffering. Illness, betrayal, and loss hung like a heavy fog over life for a while.

And now I am deciding to make a few promises to myself.

I will let go of the little things that don't really matter. Seriously, life is too short to stress about things not going according to plan.

I will not invite drama into my life nor will I let it stay when it crashes in uninvited. I'm so over it.

I will show my love and express gratitude to the people in my life. Why do we wait until people get sick or die before we talk about how great they are and how much we love them? Why do we keep to ourselves the qualities we admire in our friends and family, assuming they already know? Tell them now! If we don't, they may never know how we feel.

At the end of each day, no matter how stressful and tiring, I will go to my kids in gratitude. This last one may seem out of the blue, but it's a big one. There are days where I am ready to clock out but they keep on needing me to give. It is easy for me to stew in a toxic brew of resentment when I just want a chance to unwind but I am summoned back again and again. In the scheme of it, they are only little for a very short time.

So I have made it a priority that I will not get frustrated when my children need one more hug or snuggle or song or kiss at bedtime. When my boys wake for the third time before midnight or they sneak out of bed for the eightieth time or just want someone to snuggle them for just a few more minutes, I take a deep breath and I go to them and hold them and love them and cherish every moment of that closeness. I stare at their eyelashes resting on their cheeks and I smell their sweaty little heads and I rub their backs or arms and I remind myself that this time with them is so very short and sweet. And I am so, so lucky to have them.

I find that patience comes easier when I approach life with gratitude.

And I am so, so grateful for what I have today.