Today I am 40

Today I am 40 – but in the sense of Sandra Cisnero’s wonderful essay "Eleven" (Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories). I am not just forty but rather a combination of all the ages that have added to this. There’s the three year old in me who, when I’m wheezy or sick, wants to be held and comforted. Sometimes I feel like the eleven year old who raced back and forth across the infield of the track, cheering on all the runners – hooting and hollering for my sisters and every other runner. At times, I am still like the thirteen year old who tries to put on the “I don’t care what anybody thinks” attitude to the world outside but on the inside wants approval. I can still be the eighteen year old “know it all” who thinks life is just waiting to be handed to me and the nineteen year old who realizes, upon the sudden death of a friend, that life isn’t something to be taken for granted. Some days I’m like the self-centered twenty nine year old who would get frustrated when the day got too busy and at the end of it still didn’t have time to go running. Other days I’m like the thirty five year old mother of three children four and under who is so darn happy to have just taken a shower while all three kids napped. Some days I have the confidence of the twenty year old who saw her future husband playing volleyball and on the way home told a friend, “I think Dave G… should date me.” Then there’s times when I recall the sobs of a thirty four year old – the sobs that almost could be mistaken for laughter if the listener didn’t know better – and I remember the sense of loss and the building back of love and am so thankful that today I am 40. I’m three and I’m five and I’m fifteen. I’m twenty and twenty seven and thirty two. I’m thirty five and thirty six and thirty nine. I’m all of these, but today I am 40.