Happy Birthday!

Today is my husband's birthday.  You might think this a joyous occasion in our happy home, but like me he isn't that excited about growing a year older.  Don't get me wrong, I love birthdays.  I love the surprise.  I love shopping for the perfect gift.  I love wrapping and attaching a big bow.  I even love standing in the aisle at Target reading 73 cards until I find just the right one; the card that makes me laugh out loud and smile so proudly at myself.  I love giving gifts and receiving gifts and who can forget the best part of birthdays:  CAKE!!

It's the getting older part that I have a hard time with.  It all started when I turned 25.  Until then, my birthday was a day that I looked forward to.  A day that I knew would be all about me:  taking me to lunch, buying me presents, sleeping over at my house, and (when I was older) buying me beverages all night.  Then one day I woke up and turned a quarter century.  How had this happened so quickly? 

I began to assess my life.  I had a college degree, a job, great friends, a loving family, a boyfriend that I was really into, but why wasn't I happy?  Why wasn't I eagerly making plans and organizing a series of events to celebrate me? 

In retrospect, I think it was because all of the sudden I had became a grown-up.  And grown-ups have "things".  They have careers, houses, children, retirement accounts.  I had none of those things and more than anything I began to realize I desperately wanted them.  But good news:  later that day my great friends brought me to a surprise "Over the Hill" party and proudly handed me a cane.  Somehow it didn't make me feel better...