(Me with the toque on The Great Wall in 1984)
As of today, I have been on this earth for 32,014.5 days. The half is because I was born midway through my first day. I know this because my dad dropped my mom off in the morning at The Calgary General Hospital, where he worked, before he headed to the office. He checked on her in the maternity ward during his morning coffee break, met me at lunch break, and went home after work to tell the others they had a baby sister.
On one of my days, I realized that me and my old friend were newborns at The General at the same time. We had celebrated joint birthday parties for several years before I asked where he was born, just a few days before me, and we discovered we would have actually been in the nursery together way back then. I joked that maybe we were switched at birth and that I actually own his beautiful big house. On many subsequent days, many people got tired of hearing that joke.
On one of my days, I came to terms with the fact that I can’t blow up a balloon without hurting my cheeks and stopped trying forevermore. One of my early days, I grabbed the wrong dad’s hand on the way out of church and only discovered my error when I looked way, way up beyond the hand to the stranger’s kind face. I searched behind me for the right face and hand and family, and stepped back into it with a full force of knowledge of where I belonged. That gave me strength and belonging that have stayed for all the rest of the days.
One of the days I shopped for a yoga bra and ran into friends to whom I declared, “I liked it better when we were burning them”, and we all laughed. I have laughed with abandon on many of my days and cried with equal ferocity on way less, for which I’m grateful.
On one of my days I walked on The Great Wall of China and thought I was standing on the edge of the earth. On another day I read a book and ate sunflower seeds to exclusion of anything else except bathroom breaks. One of the days I waved farewell to my parents after they dropped me off to begin a two-year program at Red Deer College and I heard my mom say sadly to my dad, “How many times are we going to have to say goodbye to that girl”, before they drove back home to Calgary. What had I done the day before? And the day after?
One of the days I met a pregnant teenager who was to become my daughter’s birthmother. One day I let go of a love and felt an emptiness that has never left. One of my days I broke a tooth eating a hot dog. And many, many days in between I did big things and little things that landed me at 63 years old.
The days come and go and then another one comes, if we’re lucky. My brother says the days are long but the years are short. They are the days of our lives and many of them are quite unremarkable, unless they’re not. Let’s make it a good day!