I Am Sure, Quite Sure, That Today is NOT My Birthday

Every single year on November 29th for eons I've posted on this blog that today is NOT my birthday. Not! Not! Not! It's a tongue-in-cheek attempt to grapple with age-that-is-just-a-number and my ever evolving image of me and my place in the world. 

I was fifty-years-young (just a baby!) when I started this blog in 2006 and today on not-my-birthday-day I am still prancing around in the trees wearing long black boots, still writing stories in the midnight hour, and eligible for Medicare (!) what? 

You do the math.

How could this happen!!? Me? Medicare? medicare? I can't even look at the word.

I remember the day I turned thirty. I called my mother crying in the phone because I was soooooo old. 

She hung up on me.

*breathe Mimi breathe*

Maybe it's time you see the other side of my face. Or not. I'm fickle that way.

I may not be getting any younger in human years, but I'm getting older in accumulated experiential wisdom. 

Did you buy that? Me neither. Let's proceed.

Today will be spent with my new full-faced friend (ME) who will be looking in the imperfect Maybelline mirror of life and NOT counting wrinkles or gray hair in despair. NOT. I'm never colored my hair and I'm NOT starting today. NOT.  Each line, each nuance, each change tells a story; stories I'm thankful I lived, experiences that not only made me who I am but who I want to be.  Thankful for living this long when really my expiration date came up years ago with this that and the other calamity.  Clarity and direction will roll right into your life unaware when you're not looking for it, in the middle of just living your life as best you can, when you're just being YOU.  My theory is that authenticity keeps us young and happy. This "number" is only a downstream data load of life and I'm loving every minute of it.

 So what do I do on those days when I'm asked for my AARP card or "do you want the senior discount, ma'am?" (I so hate the ma'am)  I take a long slow drag from a cigarette (only in my mind. Smoking causes wrinkles. You don't really think I'm gonna do THAT, do you??) but let me continue with my fantasy.....yes.....a long slow inhalation (ahhhhhhhh) puffing out circular smoke rings towards the ceiling, and drinking two litres of highly leaded coffee (hiccup!) sipped slowly from a cup bearing the faces of my grandchildren when BAM! it's caffeine and nicotine revelation. The muse. The beginnings of a book, a poem, a song, a letter you need to write, a visit you need to make.....words you need to say.....and you realize that the run-on-sentence writer's words on the paper are YOURS and yours alone. 

And you.don't.care.about.the.grammar.police.

You're just living life on the daily. All of it is beautiful. All of it. And suddenly, that wicked little crease in the corner of my face reminds me how much it has often cost to own my words.  There have been authentic routes I thought too expensive, you see. They weren't. Gold nuggets were rolling into the muse, creating invaluable cracks in the mush that is me, opening and expanding....and there's no price tag on that treasure.

Nov 2006
Time flies by when you're having fun.

It hasn't been blue at all.

I'll just be here in the castle with Homer and Snickers celebrating a monumental birthday and being me

Want some cake? 

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