My mom recently sent me a video of me on my third birthday. Toddler me is wearing a pink dress and a blue birthday hat. She has a very round face. With her golden hair and blue eyes, she could be a cherub. In the video she blows out the three candles in her cupcake as her mother sings the birthday song to her. Does she make a wish? Or is she too young to understand the concept? She is so young and so full of hope that, as I watch it, I long to reach through the screen and give her a hug.
Birthdays were everything growing up. I loved presents and cake. But most of all, I loved the wishes. I thought wishes were sacred. I adored the practice of blowing out candles and thinking hard enough about something I wanted that I could somehow make it true. I remember blowing out my candles and wishing to follow a white rabbit to Wonderland, wishing that my dog would learn to talk, wishing to be a mermaid. Then the wishes changed–I wished to be just like Marissa Cooper, wished my crush would like me back, wished I would get into my dream college. Each year my previous wish felt embarrassing and childish in hindsight.
Tomorrow I turn twenty. For a lot of people, thirteen or sixteen or eighteen or twenty-one are the birthdays that hold special meaning. Twenty is the one that means a lot to me. I am terrified of no longer being a teenage girl. Can I draft my text messages in Notes app at twenty? Can I wear underwear with a pointless little bow in the center, simply because it looks cute? Is it okay to dance in the grocery store or the pharmacy? Is it weird, at twenty, to reread your favorite book from middle school or to watch your favorite show from kindergarten? Will I be pretty at twenty? Smart? When I wake up tomorrow, will I have grey hair and wrinkled skin? Will I have any good poems, or jokes, or stories left in me? Why didn’t I use my birthday wishes to make it slow down? Why did I waste them? What will I be in my twenties?
This year, I wish to enjoy it.
I try to picture myself on my twenty-fifth birthday. She is dancing in the kitchen of a cozy apartment with her friends. She has longer hair, more tattoos. Maybe she has a dog. Perhaps she will go out–she will wear the black minidress she got when she was fifteen, she will smoke on the fire escape, her hair will get stuck in her lipgloss, and she will drop her vintage purse on the floor of her room and fall into her bed. Or perhaps she will lovingly tuck herself into bed with a book, candles lit, hair braided on her pillow, still hugging the stuffed animal she had as a baby. She’s going to be fine. I know I’m going to be fine.
