Connie's Corner

A birthday message...

July 8 - Prompt: If you could give yourself a call on a past birthday of yours, what would you tell yourself?

Birthdays become much less of a big deal, the older I get. When I was young, I could not wait for the next one. The first most anticipated was thirteen...that was so grown up, a teenager at last. Then it was sixteen, able to drive, yay. I had to be twenty-one to buy alcohol and to vote...back then. Alcohol was never that important because I did not like the taste...still do not. And the importance of voting took a backseat to many other things at the time I turned twenty-one. I already had a husband, two children, a job and a home to take care of (husbands did not know they shared that responsibility then).

All those birthdays were major mile-markers, for me and everyone else probably. Up until age thirty, three-hundred and sixty-five days seemed like an eternity to wait for the next one, but, after that, like magic, they began to fly by and in no time at all I was forty...horrors. So I would pick any birthday between thirty and forty and remind myself to enjoy each and every day as it came, to do something to mark the day with one happy or laughable thought...write that down in a diary to look back on. After forty, we need all the happy thoughts we can get and to be able to look back and relive those happy moments goes a long way to brightening this day we are in at this very moment. I did not do that and now I have lost all those funny or special times because I did not think they were important enough to write about. And I know there were plenty of them because I have the laugh lines and crows feet to prove it .

I have kept a diary for many years but I tended to write down the "big" things that happened...to me and others in my life. But whoever said, "It's the little things that count," was so right. That is what I would tell myself if I had the chance....

until next time...c