Wake up early. Make yourself toast. Be a chef. Eat a cold hotdog out of the package. Unwrap a cheese single and fold it into four squares, breaking them into raggedy-edged bite size pieces. Think about putting Cool Whip on the pieces. Pad around the green kitchen linoleum with bare feet. Burn the toast. Use a butter knife to scrap off the black stuff onto the countertop. Sit on the couch. Watch Captain Kangaroo. Shake your butt. Go to the bathroom. Leave the light on. Flip through the thick book of your mother’s, the one with the scary faces on the black glossy cover. Look for words that you can read, words like ‘cat’ and ‘fox’ and ‘Dick’ and ‘see’. Watch how the other words have letters you know, but arrange themselves in confusing ways. Feel like this is another language that maybe you used to know but forgot. Sound out a word but then realize that blowd has double oh’s like ‘look’ and it’s really ‘blood’. Get scared and shove the book under the couch so hard that it slides across the carpet and hits the wall, so that your mother will tear her hair out trying to find it later. Put on a halter-top and shorts, no underwear. Tie a shoelace. Jump over cracks in the sidewalk. Kick a ball. Catch a toad. They hang out in the window wells of the basement in the cool mornings. Pretend the reflection of your face in the window is a kidnapped child trapped by a witch. Laugh at the kid across the street, who is outside in his pajamas. Sneak into your parents’ bedroom and listen to them breathing. They sleep naked. Their bodies are hairy in unexpected places and their breath smells like bad milk. Never want to grow up. This is how you turn six.
Wake up early. The house smells like ashtrays and spilled beer and pot smoke. Stay in bed, reading a Narnia book, until your sister wakes up. Make scrambled eggs and throw the hot pan into the sink. Run cold water on it and listen to it sizzle. You love to do that, even though you’ve been told not to. It’s bad for the pans, but it feels good, that sizzle. It forgives all sins. Eat eggs and turn on Nickelodeon for your sister. Put on the same shorts you wore yesterday. Don’t brush your hair. Make Kool-Aid. Forget to put sugar in it. Put too much sugar in it. Drink four glasses. Call your grandma and tell her good morning so that she will tell you that she loves you and happy birthday. Talk to your grandpa and he will ask how old you are. Tell him that you are sixteen and have a boyfriend and a car. Tell him that you are four hundred and have a Guinness Book of World Records. Tell him that you are one and are the smartest baby in the world. His laugh sounds like whiskers and flannel. Peek into your mother’s room. There is some new body in there, one with a shock of red hair. The snoring sounds like a pig. Go back to your bed and pick up your book. Flip to page 69. Pretend Prince Caspian is your boyfriend and you are sailing away on the Dawn Treader. You are Lucy. You are pretty and a princess and have a god for a pet lion. This is how you turn ten.
Wake up early. Sweat. It’s four hundred degrees. A thousand. A million. Your bedroom is a kiln and if you put your foot down it will sink through a puddle of hardwood floor. Run through the hallway naked and slam the bathroom door before anyone sees you. Fill the big Victorian tub with cool water and jump into it. Slosh cool water onto the cold white mosaic floor. Outside, you can hear the neighbors, their brother is named Stevie and he is cute. Very cute. Dorky with dark hair and glasses. Roll your eyes at him a lot but also secretly hope that he’s watching your darkened bedroom window, and maybe you leave your light on so that he can see you reading at night. Think about calling your friend Erika. Think about the party you’re having later. It’s a toga party and you can pretend that there is alcohol in the punch. Maybe really put alcohol in the punch. Some kids would get crucified for that but not you. Still, it wouldn’t be a good idea to flaunt it, because your mom might act the way she’s supposed to in front of the other kids. Demand a birthday cake from the grocery store, like normal people, not that carob shit. You’ve begun saying shit around your friends. You like how it sounds. Shit. So compact and succinct. You throw on a pair of white shorts and a white tank top. Later, wrap yourself in your grandmother’s white sheets, but not now, not so early that it would be dorky. Act like this was someone else’s idea. Roll your eyes when your mother’s boyfriend walks through and says he can see your underwear through your shorts. Go back upstairs and change into something else. Call your grandmother and grandfather and thank them for the birthday card with money in it. Your grandfather will fall down in his backyard exactly one month from today and never get up but you don’t know this yet. Put on an old pair of your aunt’s sunglasses, ones with giant 70’s lenses. Take them off. Take out the James Taylor cassette and pop in your Madonna cassette. Sing ‘Dress You Up In My Love’ under your breath, because you are way too cool. Think about the toga party in Animal House and wave your hands in the still cloistered air of your bedroom, ruffling the oriental dragon kite that weaves its way around the ceiling. This party will be nothing like the one in Animal House, mostly because the only boys will be your ex-boyfriend (who is still your friend) and his dorky dorko dork loser friends. Wonder if he’ll wear a toga. Wonder if he’ll have a shirt on under the toga. Wonder if he still likes you. Wonder if he’s shown IT to anyone else. Wonder what Stevie’s thing looks like. Tell your sister that she’s a loser. Tell your sister that you’ll punch her if she dorks out today and embarrasses her. Bribe her with Garbage Patch Kid cards. Look up when you hear Erika talking to your mother, who has just come out with a blue flowered sheet bikini. Roll your eyes at your mother’s boyfriend when he tells Erika that she has sexy legs. Answer the neighbor lady when she asks how old you are and beam when she says that she thought you were maybe sweet sixteen. Wonder about her brother’s thing again and then feel like a dork. Your mom orders pizzas and then realizes that she spent so much time constructing her bikini toga that she forgot to pick up the birthday cake, so she will stick the birthday candles into the sausages and they will get soft and flaccid from the heat. Sausages are not good for candles. Say ‘Shit’ under your breath, because this is just another way in which you are cool. It’s reassuring, this shit. Roll your eyes so hard that you may actually die from embarrassment. This is how you turn 14.
Wake up early. Open your bedroom door and listen to your psycho roommate screech at you because you used her toothpaste. Explain that since she had been using your toothpaste for the last four months, when it ran out and she bought a new tube, you assumed that you were sharing. Open your eyes in disbelief when she remarks that she hadn’t been using any of your toothpaste, that she hadn’t brushed her teeth in four months. Roll your eyes and say nothing until she slams the door on her way to work. Call your boyfriend. Tell him that his friend is a psycho. Make plans to move out with him. Make plans to go to the music fest at the university. Open your report card. Throw Barchester Towers across the room. Call your lit professor and ask if he’ll let you hand in the Trollope paper late and revise your C grade. Call the pizza parlor where you work and find out if you’re on the schedule for the next day. Throw a load of laundry into coin ops. Wash your face. Weigh yourself. Make a pitcher of Sugar Free Kool-Aid. Make your bed. Put away the laundry. Dial into five different computer bulletin board systems to check your email accounts. Balance your new checking account. Wonder how to balance a checking account. Decide that it can’t be that hard to balance seventy dollars worth of comings and goings. Wonder if you’ll ever have enough money to cover everything. Wonder if you’ll like your new job at the marketing research firm. Wonder how long you’re going to be with your boyfriend after you start shacking up together. Wonder if you’re going to turn into an alcoholic or end up pregnant. Wonder if it’s going to rain and fuck up the music fest plans tonight. This is how you turn 21.
Wake up when the sun falls on your face through the courtyard window. It’s early. Or late. You don’t know. You’re still jet lagged. The birds in England sound funny here and yet, like home. You’re not used to this much daylight. Light at 4 am, light until after 10 pm. You can hear your male flatmates lumbering around the hallway, making boyish sounds. You’re happy that you’re rooming with four boys to offset the other three girls. They tell jokes about penii and stay up all night on the terrace, drinking hard cider and trading stories on how to get laid. They value your insight, for some reason, and listen with rapt attention to your theory about argyle socks. The next day, they will all be wearing argyle socks. Their bedroom smells like an old wine cask. The night before this one, they led you through Mayfair, past Edwardian townhouses and Madonna’s place, swearing that there was a great Thai restaurant somewhere. Just around that corner, they swore. An hour later, you found it and had late Thai under the stars, seated on patio furniture, and now your head pounds, as it is every morning after a night with these boys. You decide to hang out with the girls today instead. Yes. The girls. You’re a little bit sad that for the first birthday ever, there will be no cake and no birthday calls from your family. Instead, you go to the British Museum and say ‘Meh’ at the Rosetta Stone and then try to lose them at Madame Tussaud’s. Later, they demand to take you out, so you put on a skirt and a white v-necked top and walk down to the pub and be amazed when for the first time in ever, a car doesn’t try to kill you when you cross the street, instead slowing and then giving you a little wave and a smirk. You feel pretty, maybe. You’ve put on make up and used your tiny travel blow dryer, which has seemed like too much of a hassle so far. At the last minute, your dining companions decide to instead go to Caf’ Rouge, so you shrug and go along, worried about being spotted by Alex, the French guy who practically molested you at the last underground party you went to. He works at Caf’ Rouge, but maybe a different one. You suspect they are like French McDonald’s here in London. You left your engagement ring at home, worried about theft or just losing it like a clutz, so you wander around trying to mentally project the ring on your left finger. Because it would be so easy to make out with a cute English boy here. Or a cute French boy. Or a cute German or Welsh or Irish or Scottish or Lichtensteinian boy. They all seem to want to make out with you. It is like being surrounded by thousands of desserts that look delicious but you’re on a diet. When taking your order, the tall dark waiter with the random Italian/Romanian/Something accent leans in close to point to his favorite salmon dish, and you can smell his breath, manly and sweet like a humidor. You’re beautiful and for the first time, you’re far enough away from the familiar to understand this. He allows his hand to rest just a little long on your shoulder, grazing your hair, and your tablemates roll their eyes. They don’t comprehend a fat girl getting attention when they are present. It is inconceivable. You chuckle and announce that you’re having a tartlet for dessert too. Engaged or not, you fucking love England. This is how you turn 26.
Wake up at your usual time. From the living room, you can hear the sounds of your spouse working. The cat nuzzles your hip. Wake up and pad through the kitchen and grab a white nectarine, then sit cross-legged on the chaise to wake up. Open the presents left for you there. Check your email. Read a dozen birthday greetings. Decide you will mope all day. Decide that you don’t have to do anything. Decide that you should really shake yourself out of the funk you are in. Accept an invitation to dinner with your mother. Ride out your apathy like a wave, like you are surfing. Instead, solidify travel arrangements and write things into your planner. Things become real if they are written on the calendar. Fill in the squares of your summer. Throw peanuts on the floor at the restaurant. Go for a drive along the Bay with your spouse, roof open, sun sinking into the far shoreline, white pelicans come in low and skim the water into their gullets as you cheer them on. Forget what day it is by bedtime. Go to sleep and dream of ships and mermaids. This is how you turn 34.
