Birthday Eve

I didn't post last night because I couldn't swallow without the kind of pain that made me long for the good old days of childbirth. I'm better this morning, but since I've had this sore throat off and on for a couple of weeks with really no other cold-like symptoms and no fever, I guess I'll call the doctor and have them stick a giant q-tip down my gullet to see what's going on. The no-fever symptom doesn't really count for much in my book because I usually run below normal.

(Unlike my husband, who always runs a temp. slightly above normal, and for a while was able to trick school nurses into calling his mom and sending him home.)

I'm at work, and must catch up - so no greater note than this for now. It's my last day as a 37 year old. Puts me in mind of this Bill Collins poem:


On Turning Ten

The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I'm coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light--
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.

You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.

But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.

This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.

It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.

-- Billy Collins