Yesterday at Tot Gym as I was crouching down to help Westley with a ride-on fire engine, a little girl with a huge halo of curly brown hair strode up to me.
"What's-yer-name?" she asked, all one word. After I told her mine and asked her hers (Madeline), she pointed to Westley: "What's-his-name?" She seemed somehow slightly dissatisfied with my answer, like she'd been hoping for something more masculine or unusual. Something she would have picked.
It seems like every time I start thinking that Westley is a big, grown-up dude with moves and words and insight, I go somewhere and run into a tall, self-assured, articulate child like this. I'm rocketed back to babydom and that bigness I thought I saw in my boy is suddenly a long ways off.
I asked Madeline how old she was. She squinted, thinking. Her dad leaned over and whispered something to her. "Three-and-a-half," she announced, proudly.
Her dad smiled. "Yeah, but when's your birthday?" he asked.
She knew right away. "May 19th."
"So you're more than three-and-a-half," he said, and then, turning to me, added, "Everything is three-and-a-half."
I shrugged. "It's a good age to be."
(That's all you can say, really. Because they all are, aren't they? I mean, is there something I'm supposed to be saying after getting into the my-kid's-this-old, your-kid's-that-old with other parents? Unless your children are exactly the same age and you can move on to, "Oh, when's his birthday?" and figure out who exactly is older by precisely how many days, it's a conversational dead-end.)
At this point, Madeline's younger brother (Issac) stepped up, and after eyeing Westley asked, "Are you his mommy?"
I laughed. Sometimes I wonder, too. "Yes, I'm his mommy."
Then he asked how old I was. His dad interjected, "Someday you'll learn that that's not polite--"
"Oh, it's all right," I cut him off, smiling, not minding at all. "I'm 26."
And it suddenly sounded so young.
I've been mourning turning 26 for four months now. I know that I'm still supposed to be immune to birthday resentment, but I'm not where I thought I would be in life four years out of college. I feel like I've passed through the protective gates of 25, out of the promise of my early-mid twenties and into my late twenties. Slouching towards 30.
Hearing a confident little girl joyfully declare that she was three-and-a-half took me back to a time when we celebrated each fraction of a year for ourselves. Each birthday was such a big, exciting deal that we sang "happy half-birthday to to you" six months out just to acknowledge that you were blank-and-a-half. That half was worth something.
While I always happily celebrated half-birthdays (we had actual half-birthday parties in my family, with cake and presents), I was never one of the kids to strive for age. I always wanted to be more grown-up, but never older. I didn't like being among the oldest in my class. I think I somehow understood that is was more impressive, more noteworthy to accomplish things at a younger age. I was very pleased (though a little confused) when, as a third-grader, I won an art contest in the "fourth grade" category. My drawing had been entered incorrectly by someone on the administrative end of things, probably because I was in a grades 3-4 split class at the time. But it still seemed like an achievement.
So now I'm in my early late-twenties--or my late mid-twenties--and I'm not sure what I've accomplished. It certainly doesn't feel like much. I don't even know what I want to be when I grow up, and I have a child, which pretty much qualifies me for grown-up status by default. I have a husband I still like being with on most days, a car that doesn't suck, two cats, no job, a nervous system that sometimes goes nuts on me, and a sweet little boy to take to Tot Gym on Thursday mornings.
"I'm 26," I answered Issac, wondering if he had any concept of how old that actually is, thinking I should have countered, "how old do you think?" instead.
"No!" he said, impishly. "You're two!"
I grinned. "I'm two?"
"No," he said again, barely containing his laughter. "You're one!"
"I am?!" My disbelief was too much for him, and he was practically roaring at his own joke now. "You're way bigger than me!" I told him, and that sent him into fits of uncontrollable giggles. Laughing, in the shadow of his sister's birthday, delighted to be bigger and older than someone.
So I'm twenty-six-and-a-third, and I can make a preschooler's day.
