The Birthday Post

I turned 29 yesterday. It will be the last year I can claim that number truthfully.

A coworker said he was glad we age gradually and not suddenly...that we don't just wake up one day to see we've grown a year's worth of wrinkles or gray hair. Birthdays would certainly be very depressing if that were the case! I think we age gradually but not evenly. It is our experience which ages us. Granted, the mere passage of time would eventually weaken our muscles and change our hair color even if we lived in a plastic bubble. But it is the dirt and worry of life that matures us. This last year has seen me through a truckload of that. The woman I was before I saw the blue line on the pregnancy test was different from the one two minutes (more like 45 seconds) later. I emerged from the newborn haze of illness/sleep deprivation a profoundly changed person from the one who entered labor two months earlier.

Babies change overnight; they go from gummy blobs to crawling and biting in seemingly a matter of minutes. Their development is rapid and new skills abrupt. By the time we have almost three decades under our belts, we miss the sublteties of our own daily maturing. But it is there. The wisdom and perspective I have gained in my 28th year will carry me forward for years to come. I can only look with anticipation to the lessons in store for me in my 29th. So, a virtual toast to all those who have been, who are, and ..most of all, who still claim to be -- 29: Happy Birthday!