31

I'm going to be 31 tomorrow.  When I was in my early 20's I told myself that if I hadn't gotten around to having children by the time I was 33, I would do it - regardless of if I was alone or not.  I was going to be a Momma and that was my time limit on waiting for the "perfect" time. 

Now, I'm 31 and I have a 3 year old and a 13 month old.  It feels strange to me.  This birthday is the first time in my life - my entire life - that I've actually contemplated the fact that I am getting older.  Older.  It's weird.  It feels wierd to me.  I thought the other day about wrinkles.  Do I have them?  When will I get them?  I use this Mary Kay Timewise facial system that is supposed to help keep wrinkles away.  I've never actually thought about that - it was just something that I used.  Not for any reason.  But are wrinkles really coming? 

I haven't spent any time in front of the mirror looking for them.  Yet.  And I won't care if I do have some wrinkles starting.  I am not afraid or weird about getting older - just having a wierd perspective thing this year.

Most days, I don't feel like somebody's mother.  I mean, I feel like Bailey and Connor's Momma...but in the three-steps removed sense of being "someone's Mom"...I don't feel that.  I am still a party-girl at heart.  I am still young and I still "dream" about when I get older.  I have plans much like I did when I was 21.  I don't feel like I've changed much since then.  Kelly might give you a totally different story.  She's known me since I was 18...she's probably got a better perspective.

At what age do you start to feel your age?  I mean, does that ever happen or are we perpetually about 10-15 years behind the curve?  Is that why so many people die without really feeling like they are ready for life to be over?  Does it take being 100 to finally feel 85 (which is the age that I feel like you are "old")? 

Weird.  I feel wierd. 

My children are a marker for me.  My marriage is a marker for me.  My possessions and the things we have accumulated are a marker for me.  Time is passing, and yet my head and my heart tell me that time is moving much slower than it actually is.  Does that make any sense at all?  I don't feel like I'm making sense. 

Sometimes I look in the mirror and I'm like "who the fuck are you???"  Not in a regret-I-haven't-lived-my-life kind of way.  It's more like WAIT...when did you grow up?  Where was I????  How is it that you are a suburban house-wife with a home and two kids and two cars and cats and bills and responsibility and a college degree and a checking account and a weekly grocery list and a must-have cup of coffee in the morning?  When did that happen?

I guess it's just a matter of reconciling.  And a lot of the time, I just have no time to reconcile.  I don't get a lot of time to sit and ponder where I'm going, who I've become or what I'm doing next.  The needs of my life are much less intellectual and much more immediate.  And that is all good.  No problems with that.  Honestly, I'm happy.  But it leaves me in moments like this where I look around my life and wonder if I am an imposter in somebody else's world because I can't remember how this dream took shape and when it got created.  It's a snowball and I am wrapped up most of the time at the dead center of it...not outside of it, seeing how much snow has been collected while it was barrelling down the hill. 

So this is me.  31.  At some point I'm gonna need to sit down with a cup of coffee and just think about that.  But not now.  There are diapers to change, meals to cook, dolls to fish out of the fridge where my son has left them, and a play date to get to.