You say it's your birthday...

...it's my birthday too....

Today's my day.

(Too bad I still feel a little sick.  Better though.)

I was initially dreading this, but then about a month or so ago had a change of heart.  After hearing a friend's philosophy on birthdays, and how he doesn't care about them nor does he care if people know his age, I've been rethinking it.  Of course, you have to know that this person doesn't look his age at all.  I wouldn't care about my age either, if the first words out of people's mouths after hearing my age were "No way, you don't look it...you look great!"  :p  It's more than that, really, he does have a good attitude about it. 

So, anyway, that day started a shift in my thinking. 

It used to be that focused on all the negative aspects of getting older.  Lamented the dings and dents, and wondered how can I fix that? 

I still focus on that. 

But I also focus on how I've earned all those dings and dents.  They're a part of me.  A stretchmark here, a scar there, that little birthmark on my back, the one on my knee where my Mom used to mark my hems by; they are all there for a reason. 

I just finished reading "The Confessions of Max Tivoli" by Andrew Sean Greer.  He has this great passage, about Alice, his love, where he meets up with her after years apart. 

"I was not saddened by how Alice had changed.  Any of her former lovers might have looked at this beauty grown from fourteen to thirty-two, full of strange and pensive expressions as this one, and felt a watery sadness at what was lost.  But I felt no sadness; I was different.  I knew more than the easy aspects--her eyes, her voice, her joy--that time leaches from the body:  I knew the ominous little cough she gave when she was bored; I knew the smell of the anise seedshe used to cover her cigarettes; I knew the tremble of her three visible vertebrae when an idea stirred her; I knew the  flutter in her eyelids that meant annoyance at some stupidity; I knew the tears that came to her eyes the instant before an outburst of laughter; I knew her quivering night-cries, her bathtub operetta voice, her bitten fingers, and her snore.  The things I knew, the Alice I knew, could not be touched by time."

And it's true, isn't it, the things people love about us are the things that can't be touched by time.  Things like a caring spirit, an easy laugh, a hug whenever someone needs it, how you are grouchy unless you've had some coffee...those around you who love you will always recognize those things about you, whether you are 15 or 75. 

So the number of the years really doesn't matter.  The exterior might need a touch up, but the interior works just as well as it ever did. 

For the record, it's 37.

Happy Birthday to me!