42

That's how many candles should be on my cake today. If there were a cake.

I had planned to do a "gratefulness" post on my birthday, reflecting on all the things I'm grateful for about my life. But it's a little hard to feel grateful right now, with a husband presently bedridden by chemo.

So this will be a stream of consciousness post . . .

Here I am at about 6 weeks old. I actually have a newborn photo of myself, but it's packed away somewhere and not easily accessible at the moment. So this is the youngest photo I have at my fingertips. That's my great-grandmother holding me. She died when I was very young, probably 3 or 4 years old. I still have vague memories of her, though. And I remember her funeral.

So, I've lived through a lot in these 42 years. A tough childhood. An adolescence I wouldn't wish on anyone. Dabbling in drugs. Running away. An abusive 12-year-long first marriage that ended in death and tragedy. My dad's very sudden death. The estrangement from the rest of my original family. A second marriage that started out tenuous and grew to be the very anchor of my life. Six kids, including a spontaneous pair of twins and a baby diagnosed with Down syndrome. And now, a husband fighting cancer.

I was a cute little kid. Shy and smart. You know that "awkward" stage a lot of kids hit? I hit mine by the time I was about 8 years old. By then I had turned into a pretty ugly duckling. The blonde hair of my early childhood turned dirty dishwater, and my mother alternated between butchering it with home-haircuts and perming the shit out of it. I wore thick glasses and had horribly crooked teeth. I was painfully skinny. People often mistook me for a boy, even as old as 12 years old. Then I grew boobs, which was nice - at least people knew I was a girl. I finally got braces on my teeth and contact lenses when I was 15, and I suppose I started to bloom then. Not that I blossomed into the proverbial swan, but I started coming out of my shell (albeit with a chip on my shoulder).

I still feel like that awkward, ugly duckling so much of the time. Those feelings are difficult to shed.

So, 42 years old. It blows my mind. In my heart and my head, I still feel like I'm 17. Or maybe 20. You know, with some wisdom added in. I'm at the point where I feel a little stab when I have to admit how old I am. I've never been one to lie about my age, but if I were, I'd say I'm 34. That was a mighty fine age to be! Forty-two is okay . . . I mean, I don't feel any different today than I did yesterday. I don't have any crow's feet yet, but I do have these two lines between my eyebrows. Worry? Stress? Who knows.

So now? I just want Michael to get better. I want my kids to be happy and healthy. I want to love my friends and for them to love me. I want to write. I want to lose 5 pounds - or learn to be happy where I'm at on the scale. I want to read good books. I want to take a trip with my husband when this whole cancer thing is behind us.

This next year should be interesting.