The kid inside squirms and wriggles in anticipation, not for presents like the kid long gone would have expected but for the contact with my family and friends.
So when I had the opportunity to catch up for a pre-birthday lunch with my cousins came about it was wonderful,especially as they announced good news about recovery from an illness.
I realised the endless years of family occasions stretching ahead of us, opportunities to connect and rejoice in life's milestones is reaching its end.
We almost burst with the joy, filling each other in about our and our children's experiences in the last year, our plans and hopes for the future and our niggling worries and fears.
You see we were each talking to someone who knew us, had know us all our life, loved our mother and father, had the same grandparents, we had experienced a lot of life together.
It was wonderful but poignant when amidst the chatter we both felt like we had to unburden ourselves of secrets that we had been sworn to keep, in my cousins case since she was 13. She had discussed it with her husband a few years ago, asking if she should reveal to my brother, who she very rarely saw, at my mothers funeral, this burdensome piece of rumour/fact. She never did and now she felt she had to tell me.
So you see, we had both been mulling over the "big" issues and the aura of birthdays as turning points in a year and in your life ,created this opportunity.
The squirming, wriggling kid intuitively knows that and for good or bad can't wait to see what happens, remember kids love fireworks.
Today, my birthday, has sent me lots of birthday wishes, even photos of a new baby , so sweet and happy, smiling her way to her next milestone , her first birthday.
