Don't worry, I'm not having a crisis about my age...yet. I'm young, free and single, and happy to stay that way for a while. No complaints whatsoever. My life's awesome, and my twenty-second year is already proving to live up to that.
It's just...well, I shouldn't be twenty-one, at least not until today. Given that I'm a proud scorpio, and that my birthday was barely two weeks into November, you may well be surprised. The thing is, I wasn't due until today. When I went home from the hospital on Christmas Eve of 1991, I was still slightly more than five weeks premature. My first Christmas should have been in 1992, when I would have been almost a year old.
Big deal. That was twenty-one years ago...so why is it relevant now? Why should I notice it and, more pertinently, blog about it? Well, to put it simply, I'll tell you what today's post is about - luck.
I'm an only child. Everyone who's known me for more than about five minutes is aware of that, because it seems to be one of the first questions I'm asked, and indeed one of the first questions we seem to ask anyone with whom we make an acquaintance. (Maybe it's some kind of social phenomenon.) What I don't tell everyone, however, (because it's served as quite good fodder for the ubiquitous 'true or false' drama game in the past!), is that I'd consider myself the youngest of four.
My mama had two miscarriages and a stillborn before me. The latter, my elder brother Ben, lived for about two minutes (as far as I'm aware) and I can't imagine how difficult that must have been for Mama - and Papa. I've always felt a sort of connection with Ben, perhaps in part because he probably would've had a disability too, had he lived - but also because he and I were the at the same gestation when we were born.
It is a thing that strikes me on this day every year - not just how different life would have been if my birthday were today, but how lucky I am to even be here. Yes, if I'd been an aquarius, I'd probably not be in a chair, but I don't think I'd have learnt as much about (or from) life; knowledge that has helped me grow into who I am today, whoever that is! I wouldn't have the friends I do - I wouldn't have met Jess, or Em, or gone to camp and have the family I've made there. I wouldn't have met 'Team Chariots'...I might not even be at Warwick, and giving back to the wonderful Starlight, which I can't comprehend.
So today, as a kind of rebirth (given that we mark it annually as a family - we're odd that way!), I'm going to reassert my goal for my twenty-second year: to live, to laugh, to love, to act, to sing, to walk, to dance...and to give thanks (and not worry) with every (literal) step. I've always preferred being early to late, but methinks from now I'll just do my best to be on time, and have fun whilst I'm at it.
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