My son “Fearless” turned five at a hotel.  He has spent each of his birthdays thus far at a beautiful resort on the West Coast of Florida, where we are now.  We usually travel with my niece and nephew, but this year, at fourteen and twelve, respectively, they declined the invitation.  A sign of times to come but to my five and six year old boys, July couldn’t get here fast enough.   Still, there is something in the air…something nostalgic, a remembrance of things past.  Last year, Fearless was one inch short of being allowed down a big water slide.  This year, they didn’t even measure him.  Some years ago, his brother was terrified of the lazy river.  This time, we couldn’t get him out of it.  Time passes, kids grow and so do I.

I turn forty in two weeks. Though I had my midlife crisis at thirty, I am sure I am going through something.  I am changing. I started blogging. I verbalized my dream of competing in an IronMan. I am writing and getting paid for it, and I cut my hair – super short and with bangs.

I wouldn’t go back to thirty even if you paid me for it.  I was lost in misery and in the words of the Steve Miller Band I was “a drinker, a smoker, a midnight toker.”  I longed for something that I could not put into words but that I knew I didn’t have. I lived in a universe parallel to reality; I had an unidentified case of teenage angst … just a little late in life.

At forty I have found that the hole inside me has finally been filled.  I feel completed by the husband and children that surround me; but also by knowing who I am and more often than not being comfortable with myself … flaws and all.

At the resort, I no longer need to be in the pool with my kids, they can swim alone.  I bring a journal with me to a lounge chair committed to doing some writing.  My plan is to immerse myself in my new essay while my kids immerse themselves in the water.

I send the boys to “go play” and they dutifully oblige … for about ten minutes.  And then it starts: “Mami can you play with us?”

Boys begging

“No, I am busy.” I answer.

Two minutes later …

“Maaaamiii, can you come now?”

“In five minutes,” I respond a little more impatiently.

Not even a minute later:

“Maaaaaaaammiiiiiiiii, has five minutes passed?” They whine.

I look up and see my two boys, hands together, begging me to pay attention to them.  I smile.  At thirty I would’ve thought I was losing my freedom to these kids.  Yet today I choose to be with my family, goofing around in a pool, and having the rest of the world wait for that moment to pass for me to rejoin it.I get up from the lounge chair, put the journal to the side, and jump in ready to revel in my kids.  For these are but moments, and sooner or later Fearless, like his cousins, may not want to spend them with me anymore.