Birthday

"....Age is number that you put in your head.....If you work hard and believe in what you want to accomplish.....go out there and put the work in and you will achieve it."

--Meb Keflezighi

Yesterday I turned 39!

I love birthdays. I've never had a bad one. My dad always said having another birthday is better than the alternative. There's a lot of wisdom in that.

Since 39 is a multiple of 13, and since some of you might think for various reasons that you will someday have trouble with this birthday or the next one that ends in a "9" or a "0" for you, here are some thoughts on why I'm happier now than I was the last two times my age was divisible by 13:

I'm happier at 39 than I was at 13 because:

• I have good friends. At 13, I entered a new school and knew almost no one. It took my introverted self two years to meet kindred spirits. Many mornings, I was so lonely I just wanted to stay in bed. These days, I am surrounded by people I like, and I have a long past that includes COUNTLESS people I like. I saw some of them in Houston last weekend. That was as happy a thing as my marathon PR.
• I see physical activity, and especially running, as a celebration, not a sentence. The worst part of my day at age 13 was PE class. The best part of my day now is my early morning run.
• I (mostly) like the way I look. I'm no fashion model and I'll never have an "elite" physique, but I've learned how to be comfortable with what I've been given (it helps that, unlike at age 13, I'm not sporting a God-awful Orphan Annie shopping-mall-salon perm).

I'm happier at 39 than I was at 26 because:

• I have a husband who loves me. When I was 26, I was on the third in a string of lousy boyfriends. My family and friends were starting to wonder if I liked only men who were bad for me. Now I see that every loser who dumped me, cheated on me or lost his fruitcake temper with me was doing me a favor by getting out the way of the one I was really waiting for.
• I am a mom. I'd always wanted to have kids. But at 26, I wasn't sure that was ever going to happen for me. Now I have beautiful boy/girl twins who build spaceships out of cardboard boxes and come to me when they need a hug.
• I am a librarian. My job is to help people find the information and entertainment they need and want. I don't please all of my library's patrons all the time, but every day at work I make someone happy. When I was 26, I was an unhappy business journalist. It might have been a more prestigious job in the worldly sense of that term, but I made almost no one happy, especially myself.
• I am a sub-4-hour marathoner. At 26, I was a marathoner, but I thought that was a one-time thing I'd done a long time ago, wasn't very good at it and would never do again. I'd still say I'm not very good at it in an absolute sense (let's be real: I did just watch the Olympic Trials). But I have proven to myself that I can get better, much better than I thought I could be. And I do believe I haven't touched the ceiling that marks the limit of how much better I can get.

Now....wouldn't YOU rather be 39 than 13 or 26?