Next Wednesday, I turn 39.

I've vacillated on this whole birthday thing (and I know, this is the kind of thing that makes those who are older than I irritated at me, just as I get irritated at the 22-year-old women complaining that they are getting old). At one point I said to myself: I'll call this my Jack Benny birthday, and celebrate being 39 from here on out.

(For those who did not spend part of their geeky youth listening to rebroadcasts of old radio programs on the local public-radio channels, Benny famously claimed he was "only 39." Even when he died (41 years after celebrating his original 39th birthday), jokes were still being made about it).

But then, another part of me, the tiny little part that wants to be in-your-face (even though the rest of me is a major conflict-avoider) says "NO. Celebrate whatever age you are. As you age, be clear about it. Why the heck should women in this society be valued less as they get older? Why should you care that anyone might think it even a tiny bit odd that you're over 30 and not married? You're not dying your grey hairs, nor are you having any other "work" done. If it bothers people to see a woman getting a bit older, that's their problem and not yours. And besides, you look pretty damn good for nearly 39. So live your age and if anyone tells you that you lack sufficient gravitas for a woman of 39, stick your tongue out at them."

So I don't know. I will say I'm glad I'm not in a career or a milieu (like some of the more urban areas) where it's more expected that a woman DO things, sometimes expensive and painful things, to slow or cover up the effects of time.

(The only bad thing about this birthday in particular? It's on a Wednesday. So I'll be too busy to really do anything for it, at least on the particular day. And this weekend I'm tied up with some volunteer work [that I probably should not have volunteered for, but whatever]. And I have to make the time between now and the 28th [I guess they aren't giving the Leap Year Day as a grace day...] to get down to the local Tag Office and get my license renewed. Which, considering how most offices of the state government work sometimes, I need to budget an hour to do.)

And I'm going to post this poem again, because I did it last year and I like it, partly because it seems a surprising departure to me for the particular poet who wrote it:

A Lady who Thinks She Is Thirty
by Ogden Nash

Unwillingly Miranda wakes,
Feels the sun with terror,
One unwilling step she takes,
Shuddering to the mirror.

Miranda in Miranda's sight
Is old and gray and dirty;
Twenty-nine she was last night;
This morning she is thirty.

Shining like the morning star,
Like the twilight shining,
Haunted by a calendar,
Miranda is a-pining.

Silly girl, silver girl,
Draw the mirror toward you;
Time who makes the years to whirl
Adorned as he adored you.

Time is timelessness for you;
Calendars for the human;
What's a year, or thirty, to
Loveliness made woman?

Oh, Night will not see thirty again,
Yet soft her wing, Miranda;
Pick up your glass and tell me, then--
How old is Spring, Miranda?