“Faith,Trust and Pixie Dust” -Peter Pan

“Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”
― C.S. Lewis

The count down to my 30th birthday is upon me.  This is not an excited, cross the days off in anticipation, countdown.  But rather a “you have less than 30 days of your youth left, better make time to do something stupid while it can still pass as cute” countdown.  Yep, I’m about to reach the age where it’s no longer endearing to see the 20-something financially struggle to make it on her own, and where each cookie consumed is eaten without thought, and the empty box is significant of nothing more than the fact that I need to buy more cookies.  No, now cookies have become magical.   They’ve gained the ability to reincarnate themselves and find a new home, usually around my thighs, chips and all. It’s almost spiritual really, they each have a second chance at life, which they seem to greatly value and fight for as they set up camp.  What used to be a few nomadic chocolate chips that occasionally stopped to rest, has now turned into a retirement resort for all things delicious and consumed. I’ve become Boca for Oreos.

30 feel’s much more significant than the other milestone ages did to me.  I never thought I would actually be 30.  This is not a morbid statement of an assumption that I wouldn’t make it to 30, but rather one of blissful naiveté and disbelief that it would ever actually happen me.  But, here it is, in all its “you’re officially old” glory and I can’t help but realize how ridiculous the last decade has been and be a little relieved that the next 10 years will likely be a different kind of exciting.  20 seems like a lifetime ago, living in my first apartment with an old high school friend, working part time as a server at a fast food place…the same job I had in high school, and celebrating my birthday in our apartment where no one would catch me drinking  a Miller Lite.  My biggest responsibility was taking care of my pet hamster, whose cage was rarely clean because I “didn’t have the time.”

At 20, I was still in a hurry to grow up, to be taken seriously, given responsibility I thought I wanted and obsessed over the 5lbs I had put on since high school.  At 30, I wish I could freeze time to keep my baby a baby, have a weight loss goal that still has me lying on my driver’s license, and would happily give up some responsibility in exchange for eight hours of sleep a night.  The last 10 years were spent working towards the next goal, ‘finding myself’ and attempting to be an adult, when I obviously wasn’t one.

I think my 30’s will be the decade of finding Neverland; trying to learn to relax and play and fly.  I want to stop looking for all the answers and believe in things like I did as a kid. I want to teach Sawyer how to make wings out of cardboard boxes like I did as a child, and then  jump off the front stoop, determined to take off, and never get discouraged when it doesn’t work.   I want to find a way to put my skepticism aside without turning such a blind eye that I lose the things I learned in my 20’s.  I want to find the balance between tangible and intangible so the line between them blurs and I begin to fully understand and accept the unbelievable as fact when needed.  I want to re-gain that child-like ability to not be worried about or focused on anything other than what I am currently doing and carry enough faith in the concepts of magic that fairy-tales can come to life again.

I guess I already know that you can’t really go backwards, and I don’t specifically want to re-live my childhood as a child.  What I want is to re-live my childhood as I am now… so I might have a better chance of appreciating and enjoying it. My husband’s new found way of dealing with stress is to color.  — When I say color, I mean exactly that.  Color.  With crayons and a coloring book. I personally think this is fantastic, and it’s one of the main reasons I love him.  I bought him the big box of 120 Crayola crayons and a giant hot-wheels coloring book for Valentines day.  – I know, I’m a hopeless romantic.

Coloring is pretty genius actually.  It’s a complete escape. No need to create or worry about the outcome, just 20-30 minutes of complete mindless activity.  If you think about your day, how many minutes in an average week do you spend on something that requires no true thought and renders no anxiety in any way?  There’s a reason that most of the people I know take something to manage their mental health.

For some reason, I feel like 30 come’s with a lot of pressure.  Maybe it’s not really the age, as it simply is the point in my life that I’m at.  I want to do it all.  I want to be a good mom, spend quality time enjoying my child.  I want to own my own business and be successful at it.  I want to have a clean house. (which in all honesty is the most far-fetched thing on my list).  I want to have time in the day to walk the dog and sleep more than five hours, work out, cook dinner, and actually assemble the baby book.  I want my friends and family to be able to come over without the mad scramble to pick up and I want to be able to take an hour out in my life to get a massage and not feel guilty about it.  Unfortunately, with a full time job, only 1/3 of the things on my list get accomplished each week.

I guess what I’m saying is I need there to be two of me.  I am splitting at the seams most days just trying to juggle everything at once and not drop the ball. I makes me wonder how everyone else does it all.  I have friends that do.  They do it all and make it look simple and I wonder what kind of magic they are using to make it all happen.  Most days, I just do my best to just get done what I can, and try to not obsess over the things that don’t; have faith that the necessary things will get done; and trust that someday I will get to sleep again.   The other days Iwonder if I should just skip this birthday, bust out the crayons and watch Peter Pan.

Being a child is to believe in magic everywhere…
“…but even Peter Pan had to grow up one day.”
― James A. Owen, The Search for the Red Dragon