I turned 37 today! Thank you for your telepathic wishes; perhaps a few of you would be kind enough to comment too.
When I started blogging in 2005, I used to diligently post on my birthday every year for 7 or 8 years. The tradition dwindled after 2012, soon after I moved back to India, and from 2014, as birthdays mostly ended up being celebrated with the husband.
Birthdays have now grown to include wishes from a larger family and friends and babies, mutual funds, newer colleagues, and bank relationship managers. VK and I have gone through our cycles of celebrating birthdays with travel (Oktoberfest to Udaipur to Japan to Jaisalmer) to keeping it low-key to now again making it celebratory in our own little ways.
Today, as busy, adult, and sober as the birthday was, I wanted to take out the time to write this. I looked through the birthday posts on my old blog, and I went from smiling to laughing to feeling close to (happy) tears. Man, my past self was hilarious, naïve and honestly, quite fun. Imagine saying things like “wow I’m 20,” and feeling like wisdom should have set in by 24, and so on. What took the cake was this, from the 25th, in a post titled “Wrapping up the first milestone“:
“But 25 is nothing, I know. And I mean it, not just because I’m that old. I think 40 is the real killer. Even 39 is ok, you’re still in your 30s and as a woman, probably done with taking care of your toddler child(ren) and hopefully back at work. Forty is still far away, so it still feels old. ”
I want to laugh and cry reading this, now that I’m closer to 40, and for assuming at 25 that parenting was an obvious and essential milestone in one’s life.
Older, and hopefully, wiser. Happy birthday to me.