My Birthday Dress

Babies are born every day of the year, soft skinned bundles of belly folds and delicate fingers turn into friends, neighbors, singers, strangers and the people who jump in line at the grocery store. In our lives, we have all been a baby, a little human dependent on the breast or bottle, a little human that needs hands and hugs in order to be well. Somewhere along the way, many of us forgot how small and innocent our ways were when we came into this world. We forgot how to love the way mothers, fathers and families love their newly-born. I think about those days leading up to my birth and how my dad must have felt seeing my mother's round belly, knowing inside that belly was the cosmos and an entire universe to me. I wonder how my mother felt as I kicked and pleaded for an invitation into this wild world.

I was once a baby, some may even argue that you can still find me acting like one on a bad day. I was small with breath and all I needed was food, affection and a soft bed for sleeping. As my crawl turned into walking and my walk turned into running, my footsteps ceased to be tiny thumbprints in the sand. I grew into my shoes and I learned how to live and love the world in which I wander. It has been twenty two years since I took my first breath and yet I still feel like the child who is seeking food, affection and a soft bed for sleeping. How often I have dreamed of keeping my baby face and never growing old.

I turned twenty two on December 13th. We celebrated the day by having a hootenanny at my house.

The beautiful reality about growing older is the way every sentence, story, lesson and memory collected over the years can turn you into a wiser human being, if you let it. I was once afraid of thunderstorms, so afraid that every dark cloud kept me inside of my room in the summertime. Now that I am older, thunderstorms much like blemishes or the fear of what people might think of me cannot keep me inside anymore.

At twenty two, I feel wonderfully free and ready to live my life with a little more gusto.