Do you ever just wonder who you are?

Sometimes, I think back to being a kid and I remember the simplest of memories from a full summer day in the pool. The smell of fresh cut grass, the green-yellow color my blonde hair would turn from too much chlorine, the feeling of cold soba noodles being slurped into my mouth as fast as possible. Pure ecstasy. If only I had known it then…

I’m coming up on my twenty-seventh birthday in a few days and as I’m sure many others find themselves doing around their birthdays, I’m thinking back to birthdays long past, and more recent, and imagining what this next one is going to be like. It’s Quarantine season, so even though Colorado has lifted the ‘Stay At Home‘ orders, we’re still told that it’s ‘Safer At Home.’ But honestly, it’s been much safer at home pretty much since the first day we got here. Regardless, there won’t be celebrating in the way of a big drunk mimosa-filled bash and stumbling around DC. There won’t be round-robin trips to all the local bars that give free alcohol to the birthday girl. There won’t be cut flowers or balloons (though, honestly, I’m okay with that part).

But it also won’t be like it was when I was a kid either. Birthday dinner at whatever restaurant we wanted – what joy! I remember some years it was Farrell’s, others it was Fish House Vera Cruz. Some years it was Texas Roadhouse for the embarrassing celebrations, others it was Chilli’s for that LAVA CAKE. When I was in elementary school, we would typically wait until June to throw my birthday party, so it would be warm enough for a pool party and school would be out. My favorite year, we went to Costco to pick up a sheet cake, chocolate with vanilla frosting. We picked up all sorts of candy decorations and icings and created a re-creation of our pool with little candy people lounging around, candy pool rings and tubes, a waterfall made of caramels and towels made of snipped AirHeads.

If I can find a picture of it somewhere, I’ll put it here. That was a really cool one. What a throwback.