to beth, on her 31st birthday

somewhere in the course of the last decade, i made a sort of arbitrary promise/ prophesy that at 32, i would be at my peak. which is not to say that anything after would be a decline, but rather, that i would reach total excellence and simply coast along, blissfully immersed in my own awesomeness.

i said it mostly in jest, much like i often talk about how i say silly life actions define me as, finally, a woman. yet still the idea has stuck with me. my own humorous promise echoes in my head: 32 will mean something. it will be some birthday of reckoning.

inexplicably, i am now only one year away from this promised peak. it used to seem so far away.

tomorrow i am 31. tomorrow i am one year away from the peak.

i tell nic and he says, without hesitation, that i'll be pregnant at 32. that that's what peaking will look like for me. not the successful career and a fit body and the hopefully less lopsided face, but being swollen with baby. i can so easily see myself, padding around in the heat with a baby in my belly, ready to finally care for and love my own little creature instead of always someone else's. i can see it. i like it.

i can also guarantee that when i developed my peak prophesy at 22 or 23,  i definitely did not imagine a pregnancy peak.

this is what i am slow in coming to.

to beth, on her 31st birthday,

life is not what you expected.

there's no way i could have imagined this. 

let me be clear: i'm not pregnant, nor am i planning on/ working towards/ trying to coerce nic or myself into any sort of future pregnancy (for now). all i am saying is, really, truly, life is not what i expected.

and i am so gloriously, wondrously thrilled by that realization. i am so grateful for the picture of a pregnant birthday as a beautiful one. that something so filled with responsibility and weight could seem like the best possible thing. 

i'm grateful that playing cards and a shared beer is as satisfying to me as my previous wild nights out. i'm grateful that saturday can look like painting the shutters for the third time and pulling humidity-loving wild mushrooms out of the mulch. i'm grateful for cold homemade onion rings on a too small table with sisters on the front lawn. i'm grateful for after dinner walks through the neighborhood and good coffee as our indulgence. i'm grateful for a boy, who sleepily pulls me back into bed for second snugs in the morning, even when touching skin is almost too hot to bear. i'm grateful that a newly fixed fan and a bright planter box of flowers are the best gifts. 

i'm grateful for things that aren't working, for this new place that's making me assert who i am, what i want, and what i believe. i'm grateful for people that make me work. i'm grateful when i fall in yoga, when my body's sore, when i don't have enough time to get things done, when i have to wait a little longer than i wanted. i'm grateful that i get frustrated regularly and have to find ways to change my perspective, because no one is going to fix things for me. i'm grateful for things that are messy and hard.

because it is all teaching me to just be where i am and love what is.

i believe that peaking might look like being happy with exactly where i am on may 30, 2016. precisely wherever, however beth loster is at that particular moment. that the peak looks much less like physical, environmental, or emotional perfection, but rather the confidence that imperfection is just as acceptable. that where i am is right, because it's where i am.

i am eking towards it now. i'm doing the work.

it feels good to work.

i get tired. i slip in and out of my direction, my confidence, my grace.

but i'm moving in the right direction.

i am moving in the direction of what might appear to be mundane, but what feels much more like strength, stability, surety. 

it is the antithesis of the on the road mentality. i am not mad. i am not mad to live, mad to breathe. i am finally descending from the madness and finding the rhythm. i am abandoning the chaos that has defined me for so many years and slowing down.

i am slowing down.

i am slowing down.

i'm peaking.

i am letting myself find a peak by stabilizing my base, by starting at my roots, by giving myself a place from which to grow. i am beginning to feel, for the first time, like my feet are on the ground. what a wonderful gift to myself.

happy birthday to me.