Thirty-four

Wednesday was my birthday.  Since I am currently still off of the Face of the Book, I didn't get the annual perky, cute, heart-warming Happy Birthday messages plastered all over my wall.  It was my self-inflicted punishment for working slow as heck on my dissertation.  Oh, you don't want to finish this chapter?  No FB birthday messages for you, slacker.

Nevertheless, my big day was a sweet and lovely day in no small part due to my sweet and lovely handsome hunk of a man. I woke up to several cute and cozy small gifts with a lavender birthday card.  After wishing me happy birthday, he admitted sheepishly, "I didn't know what to get you."  I just cried, overwhelmed by his sweetness and sincere desire to please me.  I loved every single thing. He was also determined to make me a birthday cake, and, by George, he pulled it off.  Chocolate on chocolate with sprinkles and pink gel writing out "Feliz cumple Channy."  My husband bakes cakes, people.  And yes, he put 34 whole candles on that sucker and did light them and I did blow them out. (Not before I made a wish!)  He really helped me have a special day.

How did I get to be 34? When I turned 31, I called it my "Baskin Robbins birthday" (31 flavors, har har).  When I turned 32, I called it my "Magic Johnson birthday" (his jersey number).  When I turned 33, I jokingly called it my "age-Jesus-was-when-he-was-crucified birthday."  But now?  It's the last-year-before-my-fertility-takes-a-nose-dive birthday.

I know, I know.  I need to stop reading statistics online.  There's something to be said for educating yourself, but there comes a point where it becomes obsessive, and that's no fun.  To be frank, just my existence defies all kinds of statistics. The fact that I was raised in a two-parent black home with parents who never divorced. The fact that I spent my childhood in Italy.  The fact that I'm a college-educated, married black woman (the stats are brutal, y'all), married to a white man, at that.  The fact that I'm about to finish a PhD program.  The fact that I'm trilingual (more or less). I could go on...Can I just accept the fact that I defy stereotypes, statistics, norms, whatever and live with it?  If the statistics have often not applied to me with everything else, why would they now?

Things will happen when they happen.  The present is a gift.  I should celebrate it and take care of what I can today.  Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.