Happy Birthday to Me...

I am 41 years old today.

For the last few years, many people have asked me when I'm going to start lying about my age. Last year it seemed a lot of my friends and family thought I would be celebrating my second "39th" birthday, and seemed surprised when I told them emphatically, "Oh no! I am turning 40! I've been telling Brian for ten years that I expect a blowout for my 40th and if I don't actually turn 40, how can I get a big party?"

This year again, several people have asked if I am going to fudge the truth of my years and again I feel as though I am some sort of maverick when I state that I am proud of my 41 years and feel no need to hide from the turning of the calendar pages.

My children can't believe that I'm as old as I am, but then none of them have even hit double digits yet, so they have a hard time trying to imagine what it must mean to be my age (and while I may not be afraid or ashamed of my age, at least the kids no longer ask if the dinosaurs were still walking the earth when I was a child).

My parents called this morning to wish me a happy birthday and even they seemed surprised when I told them that I did not feel 41.

"You don't?" my mother asked, almost incredulously, I thought.

"No," I replied, and then we went on with the rest of our conversation.

But after I had hung up the phone, I started wondering, what is 41 supposed to look and feel like? When I was a kid (and even into my early 20s), 41 seemed as ancient as the hills in the valley I grew up in. By 41, humans were starting to fall apart. Grunting to sit down or get up out of a chair, needing glasses to read the paper, grey hair, wrinkles, sensible shoes and old lady hair styles...this is what I thought being past the age of 40 was supposed to look like.

Thankfully, other than needing glasses (and I'll blame genetics, not age for that one), none of those things have come to pass. I don't feel old, and I suppose that goes a long way toward helping me feel like I'm just getting started on this crazy journey we call life. Quite often I get comments like, "Wow! You don't look like you're that old!"...and while the comments are nice, it proves to me that none of us really knows what this age is supposed to look like.

As far as my looks go, I can thank good genes for that one too...and for the fact that because I'm so pasty white (in fact, my husband has told me that he could read without a lamp if I was to sit next to him), I have usually tried to keep my face covered (when you can get a sun burn just by thinking about going outside, it's a good idea to not only wear the spf lotion, but a hat too)...and other than about a month or so in my youth, I am not a smoker...all of which, according to the experts, will help me retain my "youthful" appearance...

But see, the thing is this, and I don't think I'm alone when I say this...I would not go back to my 20's if someone offered me all the money in the world. I still have one or two of the old insecurities that pop out from time to time, but they show up less and less as time goes by. Overall though, I am much happier now than I was then. I am stronger, not because some bad things happened and I survived them, but because of those things, I thrived. I have learned that sometimes I do not have to convince someone else that my opinion is the right one (and trust me, that lesson was, and is, a really hard lesson to learn). I have learned that I am beautiful, not because my husband or children or my family and friends tell me so, but because I can look in the mirror and see my beauty and accept it for myself. And I have learned that what the world tells me I should do and be and think is not nearly as important as what I hold to be true.

And that is a birthday gift worth unwrapping...

A Moment in the Day...

I went to get Jamie and Emma off the bus today and had the following conversation...

Me: "So how was school today, guys?"

Jamie: "It was good. I got to play."

Emma: "I didn't get to play, so it was bad."

Me: "Why didn't you get to play?"

Emma: "Because I was singing with Mr. Hamer."

Me: "You didn't get to play because you were singing with Mr. Hamer?"

Emma: "Yeah. Mr. Hamer is the singing guy."

Me: "So you got to sing with Mr. Hamer and the other kids? That must have been fun. You like to sing and you have a beautiful voice."

Emma: "I didn't get to use my beautiful voice because all the other kids were singing so I didn't get to use my beautiful voice."

Me: "You didn't get to use your 'beautiful voice'?"

Emma: "No. But we're a team."

Me: "Who's a team?"

Emma: "We are."

Me: "You mean you and me? We're a team?"

Emma: "Yeah, you and me, we're a team. Can Jamie sing?"

Me: "Oh yes, Jamie can sing. He has a beautiful voice too you know. He can be on our team too."

Emma: "Yeah, he can be on our team too, but he has to sing with his beautiful voice when I sing with my beautiful voice too."

If only she was always that sweet and accommodating...

Colors of the Rainbow...

Today is a magenta day.

This is a term my sisters and I came up with many moons ago (read: when we were still very young and foolish aka teenagers) to describe the mood I am in today.

Magenta is a combination of colors...I'm not really depressed, so I'm not black; I'm not really sad, so I'm not blue; not jealous, so I'm not green; not angry, so not red; I'm not happy, so not yellow...just kind of a mixture of all of it...

It could be the weather...the cold, wet rain does nothing except make me want to stay in bed with the covers wrapped tightly around me...it could be the expense of having to fix the car, it could be that it's only Tuesday and I wish that it was the end of the week...

Whatever the reason, I am magenta today.

I hate magenta moods.

And then five year old Jamie and Emma came home from school and asked me how old I am.

"I will be 41 on Friday," I told them.

"What? 41?! That's too old to be you Mama!" they exclaimed.

So either they think I look much younger than I am or they just cannot conceive of anyone being that old...

I'm going to go with the first choice...because, bless their little hearts, they help turn magenta into yellow...

Why?

Why won't the kids play outside, now that the sun is finally shining and it is warm?

Why are my children complaining that it is too hot outside to play?

Why is my front door never kept closed?

Why are all the parents in my neighborhood standing at their kitchen windows with the same look of panic?

Summer vacation is closer than we think, people...

Long Drives and Children...

This weekend we had to travel from Ottawa, Ontario to Hamilton, Ontario (please note, for those of you not from Canada, that Ottawa and Hamilton are located in the same province-you will understand why in a few moments) to attend a funeral.

Usually, the trip from Ottawa to Hamilton can be made in approximately 5 1/2 hours, slightly more or less time depending on how the driver is feeling on that particular day.

It took us eight hours.

Now, to be fair, the weather was not the greatest for driving...pouring rain started about 45 minutes or so into the drive, and did not stop until well after we had landed in Hamilton. And for some reason, the harder the rain came down, the faster (and stupider-is stupider a word? It is now...) the other drivers went. Do trucks really need to be passing each other doing over 120 km an hour in rain so thick you can barely see them? Really?

Weather aside, there were four children trapped in the van with us. Three of those children were happy to be out of school for at least an extra day. Avery was most definitely not happy about missing her chance to count to 100 in french in front of her class. Ian was not happy to have to share the back seat with his younger brother. Emma was not happy to be awake before noon. Jamie was not happy to have to sit still for longer than five minutes. And Brian and I were not happy that we had to listen to the four of them complain. A lot. And answer numerous questions about whether Hamilton was in Canada too, just like Ottawa (as previously mentioned, it is).

By Saturday morning, the weather had cleared. It was cold, but at least the rain had stopped. We went to the funeral in the morning, where I'm proud to say that my children were on their best behavior. They seemed to actually get the gravity of the situation, even if they did not fully understand why we were at the funeral. Later, we joined the rest of Brian's family as they gathered together to remember Barry and share a few laughs and tears over things he had said and done during his life.

There was a buffet and a large number of people in one room, where my boys, after having proved they could be quiet, decided the time had come shake things up a little bit. They weren't really that bad, but I felt that trying to strangle one another and yelling, "I'm going to kill you!" just after a funeral was a tad inappropriate.

Brian gave his father and stepmum a ride home, and since they had very generously (or foolishly, depending on how you look at things) offered to look after the kids for us for a bit, the four lovely Lilley children left with Daddy, Grandda and Granny to give Mama a bit of breathing room.

Now for those of you who don't know, Hamilton is situated on Lake Ontario. While Lake Ontario is the second smallest of the five great lakes in North America, it is still a very big body of water. Coming down the mountain in Hamilton, the sun was shining, making the lake look very blue. My children (who have seen Lake Ontario more than a few times), all exclaimed excitedly, and loudly, "Look, Daddy! I see the ocean!"

Brian tried several times to explain that what they were looking at was not the ocean, but in fact just a lake, a big one, yes, but a lake nonetheless.

They refused to believe him.

On Sunday as we were leaving Hamilton, Jamie excitedly told me again that he could see the ocean. As I told him that it was not an ocean, it was a lake, he told me, quite adamantly that it was not a lake, it was an ocean. Avery joined in the conversation, claiming she could see Ottawa from where she was (the same Ottawa that was/is a minimum of 5 hours away and much further north)...

As we drove from Hamilton towards Toronto, Brian pointed out the CN Tower, standing strong and proud on the horizon. Jamie asked me how I had managed to drive so fast back to Canada. And no matter how many times we told him otherwise, he just couldn't seem to get that we had never once left Canada.

Either he doesn't believe we would tell him the truth, or his teachers are in for a big shock when they try to teach him geography in a few years...