So it’s my birthday tomorrow.

I’m not “doing’ birthdays anymore I’ve decided.

It’s depressing seeing the numbers climb and I don’t want to think of myself in terms of a number because it confuses me.

What should a forty four year old woman look like, act like, sound like…..

Who should she be?

I don’t “feel†that number, but hey, everybody says that, don’t they?

I don’t however still feel like I am twenty -THAT person is gone.

I remember her….I can see some of her experiences, in MY memory bank but she feels like a stranger.

I can still see the child.

I see her cradled in the fork of a big old tree down the end of her grandparents yard, high above the veggie garden with it’s neat rows of corn and red spotted strawberry patches.

She’s in the tree and she’s commanding the wind to blow.

“Blow harder now!†….. She waits until eventually the leaves of the tree begin to rustle.

“Stop blowing!†…..and it’s quiet.

She smiles.

Magic.

She had the “magicâ€.

Lying in the grass with one hand cupped to her cheek, shading her eye looking for those silver cobwebs and sparkles that “flew off the sun†that no matter how she tried to explain to her parents, they just could not see and sternly warned her about “going blindâ€.

The tree in her backyard that someone hung a swing from, and the ropes that cut a wound into the branch which made all the tree’s “blood†ooze out….She could heal that!

Plastered with dozens of her mother’s band aids and a heartfelt whispered “ I’m sorryâ€.

Solemn ceremonies where the singing of Kum ba yah was a pre requisite for the honorary send off of any and all small creatures which she happened upon in their pitiful lifeless forms.

Yes, I remember her clearly.

More clearly than any of the other inhabitants in my head.

So who am I today?

Who am I?

Sensitive, introspective, an observer. A “seekerâ€, empathetic ,creative……bitter, untrusting, insecure…..fragile.

Crazy.

Sometimes crazy.

Two people – Piscean – the two fish.

So true.

Opposite sides of personality. Conflict?

Yeah, that’s me.

Conflicted!

I don’t want to grow old.

It sounds so vain, to think about ones physical appearance deteriorating – withering - changing, because vain is not who I am, but I don't like the fact that every year, every five years, every ten years....well. Not only will there be there strangers on the inside but ones on the outside too.

I just don't like the fact that all of this - getting older stuff, is completely out of my control.

More importantly, growing older means time is running out and……

I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.