28 and Counting

When I was a kid, I don't think I really had a vision for what I would be like as an adult. I didn't spend much time thinking about my future self. Unlike many of my childhood friends, I didn't imagine my future husband or plan my wedding or think about future children; I didn't think about my career or what I would look like. All I knew was that I wanted to write and to travel, to see London and Ireland and Norway and Scotland. For some reason, I had it stuck in my head that I would die by the age of 28. Maybe 29, definitely by 30. It wasn't because 30 felt like such an old number; I just couldn't see myself evolving and growing to be an adult.

My 28th birthday was one that passed with little fanfare. I really can't remember much about it, other than I kept waiting for a lightening bolt to come out of the sky and take me out. Okay, maybe not a lightening bolt -- that would have been way too dramatic. Definitely not a piano falling from a third-story window either, but not something as mundane as a car accident. When it didn't happen, maybe I was a little disappointed. I really can't remember. But it meant another year, another birthday to look forward to.

And I've always loved my birthdays. The countdown for my birthday starts weeks in advance; I'm super-excited when it gets to be a month out and I can start counting in terms of days. I will randomly (and loudly) remind my husband of how many days until my birthday occurs. On my birthday, I'll go around telling people "It's my birthday!" and am all for going out, celebrating, and eating cake. My mom always made our birthdays special. She taught high school English and then became a high school counselor during my senior year of high school; her school was a 35-mile drive to a neighboring city, so she was always gone by the time my brother and I woke up. But she always managed to put out the birthday breakfast: sometimes doughnuts, sometimes a new box of sugary cereal that normally was off limits, always a favorite candy bar for each of us, and a card and small gift for the birthday person. She decorated the table each year with the same mylar birthday balloons. My mom helped us to start each day feeling special, as if that day was truly intended for only the birthday person. That night, we would have a special dinner and open gifts: the meal was either cooked to our specification or, more often than not, a treat of being taken out to our favorite restaurant. While we usually didn't have massive birthday parties to celebrate, we were always allowed to take a friend with us to dinner, my brother and I each carefully selecting a friend to take with our family.

A few months ago when I was back home, one of the trips back to visit my stepdad as his health was deteriorating, I was in the kitchen trying to get something out of an overhead cupboard. My mother has always kept our home clean and orderly, vacuumed and dusted. My parents' house is comfortable and lovely. However, my mom's deep secret is that she is a closet crammer. I won't go as far to classify her as a hoarder, but some of her closets and cupboards are configured like small booby traps with sentimental trinkets and items that she keeps on hand for "just in case". "Just in case" she has a Mexican-themed party, needs to give someone a gift of a photo album or vase as a thank you, or needs 16 can cozies for her visiting friends. It all gets crammed into a cupboard, drawer, or closet. And as I was reaching into one of those kitchen cupboards to grab some napkins, the "just in case" items came tumbling down on me. In a fit of blind OCD, I hopped on a chair and started to organize the cupboard, pulling things out to send to Goodwill, for recycling, for the trash. I then found the Mylar birthday balloons in the back of the cupboard. Still bright, still inflated, ready for future birthday breakfasts. But my brother and I have long since lived in that house to be home for birthday breakfasts, and I knew that my stepdad would not have any more. So I threw them into the trash.

Now I wish I would have bundled those Mylar birthday balloons into my suitcase and brought them home with me. While I don't have kids of my own, I keep thinking maybe someday I will and those kids could have experienced the birthday breakfasts. Or maybe I could have used them for my husband's birthdays, a special nod to the tradition and special moments that my mom gave my brother and me. But I don't think I could have used them for my own birthdays; I still sometimes have that nagging feeling that I've reached my birthday expiration date. I don't think the young girl I used to be could have ever imagined the adult that I would become, the life that I would lead, the people that I would love. While that element of surprise is a good think, it also makes me apprehensive of what my next birthday will look like.