Tomorrow is my birthday. I love my birthday, I love the numbers, I love being a Capricorn, I just really love everything about it; except the getting old part. I have really handled aging well, except for last year, I did have a bit of a mini breakdown. This year I won’t get the phone call from my mom, or the always present card she would send. It makes me sad, but it also makes me appreciate how lucky I was to have had her in my corner.

When my sister and I were clearing out mom’s things after she passed, I noticed that she had a number of books on looking young, some dating back to the 1970’s. It hit me that as beautiful as I saw her, I have been doing the same thing as she did, for years now. Reading everything on how to look younger. How to minimize the damage from the sun, the fun, the radiation and other health issues. Most women look and read and sometimes try a few things; however, in the end, I believe we all know that our glow, our beauty radiates from within. So all the pulling, tucking, and whatever else you try, remember that your beauty is there and always will be.

I know that’s cold comfort when your looking in the mirror, celebrating another year, or what have you; but, take stock in those lines and wrinkles. You will smile thinking about how you got them. Those lines are your memories, good, bad and in between. Vanity is the enemy, not the wrinkles.

I often think about if I could do it all over, what age would I go back to? My answer is usually 7 or 30. If I were seven, I could go back to my favorite time, grade school and being with my family, all of them, all of the time. When my aunts and uncles and cousins got together for every birthday and I mean every one. We were a close group and there was a lot of love there. I also enjoyed being young and carefree, climbing the hills around our house and simply experiencing new things. To me, this would be my selfish wish.

Thirty would be the most fulfilling though, the least selfish and the most work. I want to be my kids mom again. Young enough to keep up with them and to spend more time with them. Relive some of the reasons for the wrinkles on my face. My kids gave me such pleasure; I knew every word to every Barney or Disney song and would belt it out with them when we would watch a video together. They made me laugh, cry, yell and well up with pride. Those moments probably gave me the most of my early wrinkles. The deeper wrinkles came later and a lot of them were due to medical issues that were out of my control.

Just because I know that beauty comes from within, doesn’t mean I don’t mourn the younger, prettier version of me, because I do. I still fear running into anyone that knew me in my younger years, because it bothers me that I believe people will say, “she didn’t age well”, or something to that effect. I need to get past caring what others think about me. I guess it has always come down to that for me. I have to let go, stop caring what other people think about me, most probably don’t even give me a second thought. I’m not 20 years old anymore, I have different genes, I have lived under different circumstances, blah, blah, blah. I am a grown woman, so there! Vanity is going to get an ass kicking from me this year. Another year around the sun, yay me.

Peace out.