Today I am 40

Today I’m 40.

As a child, I remember very well the birthdays of my parents and their friends around this age.
Back then, they seemed like “uncles and aunts,”
swaying to the then-modern sounds of Ace of Base, music spilling from a cassette-driven “magic box.”
I imagine that when they celebrated their 40, they felt as if they were on their “twenty-fifth,” at most.

So here I am today—feeling just like that.
My passport says 40.
But my heart flutters almost half as fast.

“Strange?” asks the inner voice.
Compared to what…
20?
No. Then I wouldn’t have married the love of my life.
25?
No. Then I wouldn’t yet hold my heart-captain Do in my arms.
30?
No. Then I wouldn’t know the joy of having a little daughter.
35?
No. Then I wouldn’t have felt what it’s like to hold all three of them close!
40?
Yes. I have everything I dreamed of. I have the courage to be myself. I have a page of life full of written stories, and still plenty of blank space left.

So, summing it all up,
I could probably be a contestant on a show called “My Passport Lies.”
And I’d be perfectly happy about it.

The biggest pluses of life—already neatly marked on the calendar.
I bloom, perhaps not as a fresh new flower,
but just like the roses I grow—my most beautiful blooms are never the buds,
but the large, heavy petals barely fitting in my hands.
All that’s left is to stay in bloom as long as possible.

A rose barely fitting in the palm,
turning 40,
Happy V.