Twenty Seven

I recently turned twenty-seven and my birthday made me feel the way that only birthdays can- loved and celebrated no doubt, but also anxious, and a little sad. The birthday blues, if you will. I find that I spend the days in between my birthday wishing them away- always looking ahead to Friday, planning for my next vacation, longing for warmer weather. I’m careless with time like it’s given to me in abundance, until my birthday comes around to remind me that I am, in fact, running out of it. 

Life is moving forward with unyielding momentum, as it tends to, and no matter how desperately I cling to them, the years seem to be slipping through my fingers. There are chapters of my life that have officially ended; doors that I once eagerly opened are now clicking shut behind me. 

It’s a strange thing, how the further you get in life, the more you seem to look back on it. Lately, memories seem to float in as casually as the wind, carrying in details from my youth and sweeping right through me. Sometimes all it takes is a certain smell, the first bite into something warm, something homemade, that transports me back in time as if I’d never even left. That old, red brick house with its squeaky front door. All the years of pancake-flipping breakfasts, footsteps up and down the stairs, dinner dishes in the sink, coats hanging in the closet. 

It feels like just days ago that my brothers and I all slept under that same roof, our lives twisted and tangled together like roots in a forest of trees. We’d fight like we were at war with one another, yet we were the first to stand by each other’s side in any battle, facing the front lines together. We were young and naive, completely unburdened by the harsh expectations of adulthood. Desperate to find our places in this world, to find ourselves, the four of us waited in our hometown like birds on a telephone wire, eager to spread our wings and fly.

There are distinct moments that have attached themselves to me, that have worked their way from my mind straight into my heart, taking up space right in the center of my chest. Like the feeling that arrived every year during those last few weeks of school in May, and how there was nothing quite like it. Anticipation running through me like warm syrup, summertime so tangible that I could nearly taste it in the air. When I was finally handed the car keys on my sixteenth birthday and felt for the first time, like I held pure freedom in my hands. The curious combination of fear and excitement after graduating high school, how those summer months felt like a held breath, a momentary pause before everything was about to change.

I look back on my younger self with a sentimental heart, with a sort of homesickness for the girl that I used to be. Despite how it may have felt at the time, it’s easy to see that I was cruising down an empty boulevard, green lights all the way - blissfully unaware of the difficulties that were ahead, of the pain and loss that the future held in its firm grip.

I want to squeeze younger Tatumn’s hand and beg her to slow down; to remind her that it’s all happening here and now in vivid color, and to linger as long as she can. That this lazy river of youth she is leisurely floating down is instead, so utterly fleeting. I’d tell her that not all of the decisions she makes will be the right ones, but that life has a funny way of working itself out anyway. I’d tell her that there is nothing prettier than a kind heart, and that even when it breaks, because it will, many different times and in many different ways, it will always mend itself again. I’d ask her to go easy on her parents, to remind her that they are just trying to figure it all out too. I’d tell her to run back inside, reach for her brother, and hug him as tight as she can. 

I’m finding that getting older is an utter contradiction, with my body and mind seemingly at odds with one another. My knees no longer feel like they’re fresh off the shelf, and I have Jeopardy recorded every night, yet I still reach for my hot pink mini skirt in the summer, and occasionally find myself at last call on a Saturday night. My dad is on speakerphone any time I take my car in for a service, but my name is now on the bill. I drink enough to get hungover, though it seems to take less and less these days. I feel like I am coming into my own as a woman, yet I undoubtedly still need my mom. In fact, maybe now more than ever. 

I am expected to act like an adult, yet rarely treated like one. People jump at the chance to remind me that at twenty-seven I am still just a child, and then proceed to ask me when I’ll have one of my own. The word “career” is getting dangerously close to replacing “job,” yet my paychecks don’t seem to be keeping up. 

Things feel heavier than they did before, as if with each new year the gravity of decisions, expectations, responsibilities, increases little by little. My shoulders seem to carry more nowadays, my back a little more sore. I am regularly told that my twenties will be the “prime of my life” and I feel the crushing weight of that expectation, worried that I am wasting them somehow- letting other people down, letting myself down. 

That said, there is also something gratifying about getting older. It’s nice to take myself, and be taken, more seriously. It feels good to work hard for something, and I’m learning that just reaching the finish line can be, in and of itself, a reward. I’m discovering that it is encouraging, though a bit terrifying, to be depended on. Simple things, like when my dog, Goose, waits by his food bowl every night at 5:30 pm, trusting that I will fill it yet again. Because I do. And I will. 

I like understanding the world better, learning how my decisions and the ones of others, make an impact on it. I appreciate the value of an education, and I recognize that it doesn’t always occur within the walls of a classroom, and that as long as I’m willing to study the details, carry curiosity with me everywhere I go, I will never truly stop learning. 

Despite the narratives that are sold to us in commercials and on magazine covers, I’m beginning to see just how beautiful aging can be. My skin is a canvas that life paints itself on- each and every freckle meticulously placed by the sun, reminding me of afternoons spent beneath its warm glow. The wrinkles around my eyes, evidence that I have laughed long and hard.

Time, borrowed as it might be, is one of the few things I can count on to be constant. The steady tick of life’s clock never stops or slows. The world keeps spinning, pushing life forward as it always has, as it always will. Just like the song of spring always follows the silence of snow; just like warm summer mornings promise afternoon rains. 

Above all else, my birthday, as it came and went, was a reminder that I get another year of this. I get to order ice cream after dinner, extra sprinkles on top. I get to unfold my arms and pull people in close, share a bottle of wine among friends, buy coffee for the person behind me in line. I get to wear colorful dresses and wander through libraries. I get to ruffle the feathers, drift without direction, lose my footing. All of the heartbeat moments that are mine to keep, mine to remember. 

And that for me, is simply enough.