There’s nothing like the week before your birthday. You begin to notice, at first, that you have some new wrinkles on your hands. Huh. Lotion. Denial begins with this precarious but fervent NO! NO! There is NO BIRTHDAY! kind of way. Your brain takes over like a kindly nursemaid before you can do any New Year’s Eve like reflection and a drunken, baudy (at least in my case) personal Auld Lang Syne. And then JesusChrist! MotherofGodandAllHisDisciples! Your kids start lying about the presents they’re getting you and instead name stuff they want to get you that’s really for them. “Mommmmm…would you like a gift certificate to Build-A-Bear for a pink bear with a blonde wig and round glasses? Mom! We got you a cotton candy machine! And sparkly nail polish and earrings with glitter and a 1/200th replica of the TIE Fighter!”
I am fond of saying that I had my 30s in my 20s, so now I can have my 20s in my 30s, but the truth is that I can no longer drink that much, stay up that late, be that insecure, or get pregnant. It’s just altogether unpleasant. But the truth is, I will be minivan-aged. I will be dye-your-roots aged. 31, to me, is boxed wine on the patio. I will be in the Age of Ordinary. Even 35 is more exciting, I can only presume.
What are the words to Auld Lang Syne? I can’t remember.
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Upstairs, in the hallway, are two children running in pool-soaked underwear because they couldn’t bother to change into swimsuits, slamming doors…I’m wincing waiting for someones bloody fingers to be delivered to me.
Back up a few years. I’m a harried owner of a children’s toy store. It appears light and airy, effortless. I wear Ann Taylor Loft. Perfume. Hot shoes. I have solar nails. Men flirt with me while they buy their chidren a toy on their weekend; their divorced wives come to me the following Monday to see how much he spent. It’s Christmas year round, opening boxes, greeting customers, running fanciful birthday parties, catering to wealthy clientele. A veritable blur of wrapping paper, tissue and other people’s begging, crying, snot-nosed children. Inside the yellow office, I may as well have died. Behind the door, I cradled my baby and prayed for a way out of it. The nanny had moved the food around the day before in the pantry and I couldn’t find what I was looking for. She and my husband had inside jokes. The housekeeper asked me to wash a dish, bitch, in the nicest way possible. My friends vanished and I was completely alienated for not wanting to be a full-time mommy. I woke in the middle of the night with lumps as big as oranges in my throat; sweating nightmares of bills that couldn’t be paid, staff that couldn’t be counted on, appearances that were the unravelling of a personae that wasn’t my own.
Before then. I am happy. I glow. I am burnt out, though. We own a consultancy. My husband and I work together. I design. I take care of babies. I know nothing else but my little corner of the universe, carved out in art and print, burp cloths and diapers, an office with people working in our living room. Then a bigger office, then no office again, then another office with people once more. Personal dramas, business dramas; the hot and cold of money. Some months it was a terrific idea to steal toilet paper from a mall bathroom. Some months we could float over with no work and plenty of pocket money.
Go back further and my husband and I are in an office where we are praised like royalty. We make millions for the terrific man we worked for. We are deeply in love and find it hard to imagine we don’t control everything we touch in our universe. We get married, have a baby, build a house and then lose our jobs. Before all of that, we were just some arty, smart punks that got a lucky break. Then we were responsible; adult.
That’s my life. That’s who I am. It’s also who I’m not. To say that I’ve been bouyed by constant opportunity is a truth. To say that it’s been countered with constant bad luck would also be.
I’m 30.
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