For my birthday, I made cider donuts instead of cake. It’s taken a few years, but I’ve finally figured out that we’re not cake people. We make a cake, eat it that first night, then it sits for days until it gets crusty or ants find it, both of which are gross and a huge waste. And because we have four gallons of fresh apple cider, I thought maybe birthday donuts would be interesting.
I crossed my fingers and hoped they’d turn out.
Making a cake would have been easier. At least, a box cake would have been easier. I would have spent less than ten minutes hands on and then could have sat down with a glass of wine and a book. Instead, I was boiling and simmering a cup and a half of cider down to half a cup and telling Lily which measuring spoon to use for which ingredient as she took over mixing the dry ingredients and I mixed the wet ones.
It took us about forty-five minutes to get the donuts in the oven, the kitchen smelling of cinnamon and apples. I sat down for ten minutes, then was up again to dip them in cinnamon sugar.
“We should eat them now,” I told Adam, as he breezed through the kitchen. It was five o’clock and we hadn’t had dinner yet. “They’re supposed to be best right from the oven.”
He dug out the candles and pulled on pink one to place on top of my donut. So much simpler than cake. He lit the candle and sang Happy Birthday with our kids who were ear-to-ear smiling. Certainly, it was because it was my birthday but, more certainly, they wanted to dig into their own sugary donut.
I blew out the candle and we ate. The donuts were amazing, the perfect amount of cakey cider inside with maybe a little too much sugar outside. I was satisfied. I made something delicious.
Turning thirty-seven isn’t anything to write home about. I’m now hovering on the tiny peak between thirty-five and forty, but squarely on the downward slope of my youth. A few weeks ago, a friend suggested we start planning a getaway for our fortieth birthdays. It stunned me. “Let me turn thirty-seven first,” I said, though, once the shock wore off, I knew why she wants to start planning now. We have three whole years. That should be plenty of time.
We had this conversation at our alma mater. It was homecoming and our fifteen-year reunion, and we’d spent the day revisiting our college days, flipping through yearbooks and reminiscing. I hadn’t been back to campus in all these years, which is strange because I only live thirty or so minutes away. Still, when I graduated, my eyes were set forward. On to the next thing. No turning around.
That mindset served me for many years as I went on to graduate school and into a marriage that swept me a thousand miles away. I looked out at what was ahead and had so much hope. That twenty-one-year-old, just wrapping up her college years, she was filled with hope. She believed it would all work out eventually, even if she had to figure it out along the way.
Just this morning, Josh asked me how old you have to be to not go to school anymore. “Well,” I started, “you’ll be seventeen when you graduate. But are you planning to go to college?” He said yes. “Then it’ll be when you’re twenty-one.”
He was sitting at the kitchen table working on addition problems he’d ask me to write for him. He looked up and said, “That’s when I get to live my life!”
I laughed out loud. “But Josh, you are living your life right now. You just have to go to school every day.” He’s six, a first-grader. But it makes me wonder what he sees, what he’s making out of his experience. What hope does a six-year-old have for his life?
What hope does a thirty-seven-year-old have for hers?
I didn’t really want to go to homecoming. When I think back to college, I’m more inclined to think about the awful things I did: the night when a friend called me to pick her up from a bar and I refused to go, the editorial I wrote about 9/11 that scolded one of my professors, the time I moved out and didn’t let my roommate know until the last minute. I did whatever I wanted to with no regard to how my actions made anyone else feel. And now, a little older and wiser, I feel ashamed of those things.
I’ve mentioned this to my friend, the one who suggested with get away for our fortieth birthdays, and she was reassuring. “We were young, and everyone made those mistakes,” she told me. “I doubt anyone remembers any of that.” She didn’t. I recounted things I’d done, mistakes I’d made, and she didn’t remember any of them.
Something unexpected happened when I stepped back onto campus a few weeks ago: I remembered who I was. I’d forgotten. I’d forgotten that before I was here, I was there. I’ve forgotten that the girl I was at twenty-one is part of the woman I am now. She was happy and unsure of herself but trying her hardest to figure it out. She tried things and took risks and sometimes came out on top and other times stomped around w
hen things didn’t work out. But she had hope that someday it would all come together. She had faith.
I’ve been thinking about her a lot lately. What would she think of me now? Would she be proud of who I’ve become? Or would she be disappointed that I’m still finding my way?
Thirty-six was a hard year. It was a year of starts and stops and of me inevitably hiding from it all, hiding because it was easier even though I knew eventually I’d have to come out and face the music.
But I’m thirty-seven now. That’s when I get to live my life.
Today. Here. Now.
With all the mistakes and fun and right turns and wrong turns. With all the false starts and awkward dance of two steps forward, two steps back. With all the wins and losses and cider donuts and dessert first. With people who remember who I used to be and see me for who I am.
That’s when I get to live my life.
Because sometimes we have to cross our fingers and hope it all turns out, and sometimes we have to turn around and see that it already has.
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