Alright, I'm gonna say it and I expect you to remember it. June 9th. Got it? June 9th I turn 40. That would be a milestone, bob. Two friends are coming down from Rochester to pamper me on the 6th. They'll be leaving to go back on my birthday evening. It will be the first birthdays my husband and I have spent apart since we've been married. His is June 14th. But he's WAY older than me. ;-) (okay, three years.) Yes we're both Geminis. That makes four, and baby makes five.
Halley tells me that your 40s are an amazing and wonderful time--an energized, sexy, mature, knowing decade. So why am I thinking, "yikes"? The friends coming to visit me are friends from college, which feels like it was five or six years ago. But, it was 20 years ago. Holy cow--I've lived almost two college lifetimes already, and I feel like I just graduated a few years ago. Time continues to play tricks on me.
To me, aging is this mysterious thing, scary too. My own father didn't live as long as I have lived already. Maybe that's why I feel like I'm living on borrowed time. Or maybe it's because I almost died after having Jenna. Scooting by within an inch of my life. Leaves a nagging feeling that tells me I'm not supposed to be here, left over by chance, squatter's rights on a bizarre life. That's part of the power in Helene Cixous for me. She writes much on the feeling of exile, of having no country, of being at home abroad. These are things I feel every day. Feeling like I should have already died, and with that, feeling very much alive.
In the aftermath of a death that didn't happen, you are more aware, in tune, intuitive, open, electric. I tend to tune into things that I have no business tuning into, in people, in friends, in strangers. Ghostlike, I walk along observing, from here, but from the other side too, a little bit of both. Cixous would understand.
And so, 40 will come, a week from today. Whether I'm ready or not.
Get your party hats out.
