I'm 38 years old today. The 3 and the 8 stack up together and make 11 times 2 makes 22 time 2 makes 44 times two makes 88. 38. Does 38 feel like 23 Does 38 feel like 90? This is how 38 looks right now. A little bendy in the upper vertebrates. A little crinklier in the eyes and forehead. A wisp or two grayer. A smidgen wobblier in the ass. These are all mirror objects. Blood and bone and water, skin sag. What is the spirit of 38? I can sit still for longer periods of time. I can watch myself from a distance and not become ruffled in that watching. Falling doesn't feel as hard. I can hear yes and no and maybe. I can speak when the pause whispers go. Also, in 38, in my fourth year of mothering, I have graduated into a less guilty place, my mother guilt is on its way to being eradicated. It's taken some thought. The outside pressure to be only mother isn't sticking to my skin the way it did a year ago, when I turned 37. I am. She is. We are. We come in 3's. Today she will see me as mother creature, but she will see me as Felicity. She will see herself as Beckett. She will fly and I will let her. I will fly and she will let me. She will see me standing alone, making, or not. She will see me sitting with myself, not feeling like I should be there, breasts out, ready for suckling. We will come together. We are together and separate. My breasts have become my own again. This is the love that I know. This is the love that I want. This is the love that I feel, entirely.
