You’ll only be 40

Tomorrow is my birthday, and I can distinctly remember being little and asking my Mom if I would be alive in the year 2020 (I was born in 1980, so I’ve always been fascinated with the round numbered years). “I hope so,” she said, “you’ll only be 40.”

How does that feel like both a lifetime ago and also like I blinked and it’s here? Time is funny like that. It goes so slow and it goes so fast, and in the sage, wise words of Ferris Bueller, “If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

I was telling Justin that I’m not at all sad about getting older, I’m truly one of those people who believes aging is a privilege. My mom’s mom was only 39 when she died suddenly of a heart attack, so Mom wasn’t using those words “hope so” lightly. Every day we’re breathing is a gift.

But I also told him that I think what I’m feeling is that it’s weird to say goodbye to my thirties. Like when you lose someone and realize you’ll never be able to call them again. Starting tomorrow, anything that happens from here will happen to me in my forties.

I’ll release my first book in my forties. I I’ll write my second book in my forties. We’ll start our family (whatever that looks like) in my forties.

And I guess what I’m feeling most of all is that I want to make all those previous versions of me proud. Little Mary, twenties Mary, thirty-something Mary. They all fought SO hard to get here. They did the heavy lifting to dig our way knee-deep out of the mud.

And now here I stand, planted firmly in good Dirt. Gently swaying with my arms stretched wide towards heaven.

I read a quote the other day that said, “Someday, you will meet the happiest version of you. And it will be worth it.”

And…it is.

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