Another Year....Wiser?

It's funny that after the age of 21, having a birthday roll around each year starts to become a little painful.  Another year ticked off, a few more wrinkles and only my stylist knows how much is blonde as opposed to "Norwegian Blonde" (our code for grey).  My birthday this year came creeping up on me.  I've actually spent the last few weeks lost as to what day it is and what is on the agenda for each day.  It's little wonder that a few days before I realized that I would be checking off another year.  Mentally tallying up everything that passed in the previous and creating a wish list for the next.

Then there is the inevitable thoughts that float through the transom of my mind.  What will it be like when there are twenty more years that have been ticked off?  What will I have checked off for my bucket list?  Then of course the thoughts turn toward mortality and what that really means.  It is becoming less vague with each year.  With the thoughts of what will it be like to not be alive then turns back to what shall I do with what's left?  Each year that particular thought becomes a little more uncomfortable.  No one likes to mark what time is left especially when there is no guarantee that there is any time left.

I will say that I'm pleased with this last year.  I have accomplished a lot, a heck of a lot more than I did when I was 20, young, thin, energetic and unattached.  My accomplishments in this last year in particular mean so much more too.  Now when I look back at twenty, it's not so much with wistful dreamy thoughts.  It's more defined now.  If I had only known then what I know now, I'd have wasted a lot less time.  I'd have been getting on with the business of being alive and really living, instead of merely marking time.  Wishing days away, wishing years away.  Now I'm so busy living that I can hardly recall what day it is.  When I'm told what day it is, I could nearly care less, except for being a little too aware that there may not be decades before me.  Really, what shall I do when I grow up? 

What I do know is that waking up on a birthday morning to my wonderful husband and two incredibly smiley kids with nothing in particular to have to accomplish, is the most wonderful gift.  The gift of this life with them is more than I could have dreamed of when I was twenty.