April 26, 1980.

I was born at eight in the morning 28 years ago today. My mother and father were married and mostly still in love. My mother had prepared every single thing perfectly so that I would come into the world gently, blissfully, ecstatically. She gave birth naturally, and to jazz, Art Farmer’s Gentle Eyes. My father fainted at the blood. My mother kept giving birth, coach or no coach, because she was calmly and surely ready for me. This is a pretty good metaphor for my entire life.

On that rainy Saturday, April 26, 2008* . . . Blondie came in at #1 for the third week in a row for their hit “Call Me,” the theme song for Richard Gere’s American Gigolo. A young mother and daughter (Louise Yvonne Faulkner, age 43 and Charmian Christabel Alexis Faulkner, aged 2 1/2) disappeared, still without a trace, from outside their residence in St. Kilda, Victoria, Australia. The longest jump by a jet boat was set on this day at 120 feet. And Channing Tatum came unto the world.

It’s 2:30 a.m., and I am awake to greet the midnight, dawn, and rest of the hours of April 26, 1980, because I have to catch the 4-something-a.m. train to meet Dave at JFK, where we will pick up a rental car and head to the Hamptons for the weekend. I’ve never been, and you know how I love to rub elbows with the rich and famous … or at very least eat where they eat, sleep where they sleep, and breathe the same air they do. Anyway, I’m excited. It’s still the off-season, that is, it’s not exactly beach weather, but that perturbs me not because I’m a bit of a snob about mainland beach water (this includes California, people. I have impossibly lofty standards, having grown up in Hawai’i.). And there’s plenty of other things to do. Like sightsee, and hopefully visit Duck Walk Vineyard, and swim in the hotel pool, and rent bikes, and take long walks, and feel sand between my toes, and eat delicious food, and drink copiously, and talkstory with Dave about every random thing that pops in my head, and not blog compulsively, and unplug from the world, and spend some time growing comfortable in my slightly older skin.

Am I exactly who I thought I’d be at 28? And exactly where I thought I’d be in life? Am I even exactly who I want to be period? No, no, and no, but thank god. It’d be a long and boring life if I had already obtained everything I could imagine for myself. Sure, I wish I were skinnier, hotter, bolder, and had an easier time talking to complete strangers. I wish I were less covetous, less bitchy, and more able to control my temper. I wish I had less stress, less work, more money, and more hours in the day. I wish I could rediscover that compulsive need I had, circa 1980–1998, to write, because it sure as heck would come in handy when I start graduate school this June.

But I have plenty to be proud of. I feel beautiful and comfortable and usually even sexy in my skin. I am occasionally damnably charming. I am a good procrastinator, an even better editor, and an excellent writer. I am the kind of best friend I would want to have, and I am a Wife like it’s both the passion of passions and a job for which I want a promotion. I have learned to cook and at least sew buttons back on. I have surrounded myself with the most incredible, diverse, vibrant, creative, kind, passionate, and fucking brilliant-est-est friends (from ages 12 to 60+) you can possibly imagine . . . but you don’t have to imagine if you’re reading this, because I probably count you in that group. I try my very best to live my dreams: I married the man I said I would when I was 17; I moved back to New York; I got into graduate school for writing; I got a tattoo; I’ve travelled to Jamaica, Tahiti and Moorea, Paris, and Tokyo. I wrote a libretto and eventually I will write another. I wanted to write novels, so I wrote three. I wanted to learn more about short stories, so I started writing five new ones this year. I try to acknowledge the things I’m afraid of and then do them anyway. I try to keep myself humble. I can be thoughtful and a great support system, but I also firmly do not believe in putting everyone’s needs before my own: a lesson slow learned and hard earned. I believe in the truth, in telling people what I really think, but I also have no problem with the occasional white lie, if it’s not hurting anyone (after all, fiction writers can’t exactly be sticklers for the truth). I am slow to befriend someone new, caught in the awkwardness and rusty disuse of those breaking-the-ice skills, but when I have embraced you into my life, you will know it, you won’t doubt it, and it will take a lot for me to ever let you go. If I love you, I will love you so much and so well that I will carry both your dreams and your grudges close to my heart. I can be a tenacious motherfucker. I forgive, but I don’t forget. I love and I am loved. Finally, I am my own best friend, and I am my own hero.

A reminder from the birthday girl to the birthday girl and all of you: “To 2008, then. May we all be unabashed and unafraid in our living.”

---
* Other stuff happened on this day in other years but I guess it was a slow news day in 1980. Except for, of course, the birth of me. Check out this website to see what happened on *your* birthday.