The Best Part About Turning 40

I know women aren't supposed to reveal their age but my philosophy is that since I've been told I don't look it, there's no harm in telling the truth. Besides, age is another double standard women can do without living up to. If men can proudly announce how old they are, women should too.

So there. I'm forty.

It's easier typed, than said. Believe me. I was depressed for five minutes, thinking that being a single parent with a daughter almost out of the house and on to her own life, was the end of the journey for me. That and still having unchecked life goals.

Such as:

• Go back to theater. Even in a tiny role. Or as a production assistant! Or at the Front of House!

Me with orange hair and purple bangs as 5B in Repertory Philippines' Murder for Rent

• Learn how to play the drums.
• Run in a 5K.
• Live in New York.
• Live in San Francisco.
• Go home to Portland.
• Go to London for the 2012 Olympics.
• Work in radio. Again.
• Do voiceovers. Again.
• Write a book.
• Go back to school.
  

I shook off the doom and gloom with the thought that the best part is enjoying seeing K turn into an adult. A good citizen. A good woman. A beautiful, talented, smart, funny, creative, artistic, human being who knows her way around a new city all by herself.

Someday, grandchildren.

Yes, here at possibly the halfway mark of my life -- give or take five to ten years -- there is so much to look forward to; checking off these unchecked goals and then some!

But if this is as good as it's going to get, I have much to be thankful for.

I have a big God who will keep taking care of me and my daughter.

18 Candles

8AM on December 28, 1989 I underwent a C-Section to deliver a healthy, 6.15 1/2 lb, 19 inch baby girl. It was an anti-climactic delivery to the preparation I had put into the nine months I was infanticipating - child birth classes, Lamaze books, Leboyer books, active birth books - you name it, I knew it.

But a visit to my OB-GYN coupled with a possible miscalculation on my part - plus a nervous mother who didn't want anything bad to happen to her daughter (me) or grandchild (Kyera) - left me and my then-husband with no choice but to agree to the expensive operation.

Seeing that we were twenty, both unemployed at the time, and living under my mother's roof, we didn't have much of a say in the matter. So we went home to pick up my and the baby's diaper bag, said good-bye to our bedroom, and promised it we would return with a baby. I turned to my husband and said, "Our lives will never be the same again. The next time we come home, we'll be parents."

You don't really no how much your parents love you until you have your own children. And the revelation doesn't end at birth. Here I am eighteen years into parenthood - sixteen as a single mom - and I still find myself profoundly grateful for my parents, albeit they are both dead now.

A former boss summarized it perfectly. "Becoming a parent ruins you. You are done for. You don't know how much you can love another human being until you have a child."

Welcome to the most joyful destruction of life.

Now that Kyera's eighteen, it's only a matter of time before I will happily gloat over watching her ruin herself. She's been warned that her children will be spoiled.

I can only hope that when that time comes, she will have been well-prepared. The one thing I know she will always know, is how well-loved she has always been.

Aaah, parenting. I've loved every second.