Others fretted about turning 30, 40.
Not me.
In fact, I’ve never understood all the fuss about any such birthdays.
Maybe ‘cos I’ve always thought I had all the time of my life
to do the things I wanted to do
as if there were no limit.
This year feels different.
This year I’ll turn 50.
This year it’s me who freaks out.
Some uneasy feeling has started to creep into my mind in the last few months,
maybe even shortly after my last birthday.
All of a sudden my limitlessness became limited
As I’ve realized that - at best - I’ve already lived more than a good half of my life already
This year feels a bit like the run-up to the annual accounts
and this makes me nervous.
With this notorious birthday I feel, I’ll have to let go of my youth, of parts of my dreams,
of this tiny hope burried all the way down in my heart that I too will have my own children, my own family.
This hope of becoming and being a mum myself, of chaperoning my children into their lives is dying a slow and silent and unspectacular and even unnoticed death.
Whom will I see grow up?
Whom will I teach the things I know?
To whom will I give our family treasures, letters, pictures?
With whom am I to share our family secrets and stories?
Who will be interested to learn from me, my experience and skills?
Who will visit me, care for me when I old and frail?
It saddens me that I cannot share my life, my story, my legacy.
Can you mourn someone who has never actually existed?
The Japanese have a word for aborted or stillborn children: they call them Mizuko – water child.
My own mother tongue lacks
I don’t even have a proper word for this imagined child of mine – a child that has only ever existed in my head.
So, I will call her an air child.
But what shall I do with all my unused love and care that I’ve saved up all those years for this air child of mine?
I’ve bundled it, wrapped it up, and have buried it in the deepest part of my heart – a place I hardly ever dare to go these days as it is too painful.
Yet, when tugging all the love and care for my air child away, I’ve also cut off the link to all the love and care for me and the rest of the world.
Maybe it’s time to let go.
Maybe it’s time for a new dawn.
Alma