My birthday is Friday. I will be thirty-three years old. I am not as depressed as I was when turning thirty.

I shy away from birthday surprises.
I squirm if somebody sings the birthday song.
I don't like birthday parties. The birthday parties I remember weren't mine.

What do I, and a community swimming pool, have in common?

We both turn 40 this month.

Construction on our neighborhood began in 1962, and in 1969 the pool--the hub of all our summer activity, the place where both kids learned to swim, where L.'s self-esteem soared for a brief, and wondrous period, the oasis in the woods we love so much, was opened. It's strange to me to think about that summer, forty years ago; to think that the month I was born, kids were jumping into the water for the first time at a pool in a neighborhood far, far away.

Nine years ago today I lay in a hospital bed in upstate New York laboring. And laboring. And laboring. There didn't seem to be an end in sight. The day before, my mom and I had taken a taxi to the doctor's office for an ultrasound and the tech, in a deadpan, matter-of-fact voice told me I had no amniotic fluid left and I'd need to be induced.

ASAP.

(Over the years I've come to realize that medical people always impart critical, urgent information in that same deadpan, matter-of-fact voice the tech used.)

I've had a love/hate relationship with February for most of my life now. Up until I met Scott, my feelings tilted strongly toward the hate side of things. February, the shortest month of the year, just feels like the longest one. I tend to spend most of February torn between wishing for a snow day and longing for the first breath of spring. February has always felt like a month to trudge through, face braced against the wind. Even the daffodils that spring up around here prematurely every February seem sad rather than cheery--it's all a big tease, and it's long.