My Kitchen.

There’s something nostalgic about the 22nd of every month. Perhaps it’s that my birthday falls on the 22nd of October, okay, I know that’s what it is, but there’s something pensive about the date. It’s that the 22nd serves as an easy marker for me to remember exactly how old I am. I have currently spent 30 years and 5 months on this planet, which does not include the time I spent inside my mother’s womb. I guess it would be hard to celebrate birthdays if we included the days from the moment of inception.

Imagine the birth annoucement if we considered our “inception date” as the day we were born. Instead of calling it birthday, we could celebrate our day of formation. My formation-day was somewhere in January. I came out a couple of weeks late, but here’s what I imagine the birth announcement would read. Today our daughter Jamye was born, at over 9 months and 2 weeks we welcome her out of her shell.

I was a jaundice baby. I was born yellow, and my mother left the hospital a couple of days before I did. I don’t really know what they do for jaundice, but apparently the doctors didn’t do anything to me. I still think I have a yellowish tint to my skin. It makes me feel special, like I have a little added color or something, and seeing how much I like color, it kind of makes sense. Or no sense at all. Depending, again, on how you view things.

And then of coures there’s the fetus vs. baby debate. And since I am pro choice, not anti choice, I can side with the right for a woman to choose what to do with her body, without being told that it’s murder. But that’s a deeper debate, and I’m keeping things light. Although I always have to go dark at the end, just for a minute.

Whatever. Today is about the 22nd of the month, and how it will always remind me of how far I’ve come. Or how far I’ve still got to go.