When I’m 64 

My birthday week begins today. Seven days out of 365 that I am consciously aware of my life advancing in time. It’s extra acute this year  with the knowledge that roughly eight weeks from now time will move faster than I have ever experienced before.

I’ll be 32 years old this week and 32 weeks pregnant. A small delight for a person who revels in the coincidence of the numbers we find around us, such as myself. Not that I find meaning behind such numerical happenstance, but I do contend there is contentment to find in the sheer synchronicity of numbers lining up. This week points big to 32 – a number and age I had never guessed would have any large significance. And yet…there it is.

This is the first year I haven’t cared to celebrate in any grand or social way. I suppose that has something to do with the mens XL t-shirts and boxers which are my outfit of choice. And that the pregnancy hormones, apart from the tears, seem to insist I smell like the hippy I am, regarless of how hard I try to mask it. There is also this revelatory fact that it’s no longer just my life. I have this other life camping out inside me that deserves acknowledgement as well.

This brings me to a kind of consideration that leaves numbers behind. It begs for the measurement of time to disband, because this little life isn’t even here yet, and I already ache for endless time for it. And me. But we can’t, at least I can’t, even think of life without quantifying it. Will I still be here when you’re 32, little person? Will you still need me? It’ll be when I’m 64.

so happy birthday to me.