I did not expect to still have freckles on my fortieth birthday.
I did not expect to still prefer Hello Kitty over Louis Vuitton or still be so bad at painting rooms and making myself high, like I did this morning, shut into the guest bathroom off the back entry hall, cursing out the right angles and rising on the fumes until I stumbled out, finished coat number one and wondering why there were so many freaking unicorns grazing in the back yard since it's raining.
The boys welcomed me to their exclusive club this morning. Where no one gives a fuck anymore and we have money and smarts from living that I would call character on any given day but today is different and so it's smarts today, and nothing else that might seem negative.
Lochlan looked at my face and told me I have not changed a bit from when he used to count my freckles and tell me when I was long grown up I would look exactly the same. I am still waiting to grow into my nose and for my hair to pick a color already and stick with it. He smiled and said it was part of me and not to worry about things so much like I do when I look into the brightly lit mirrors and see my soul running down into deep lines around my eyes, and diluted green irises from using up my lifetime quota of tears. I could look better but instead I think I look like I'm supposed to.
It's too late now anyway.
Caleb called me and wished me a Happy Birthday, softly, with encouragement and a deep reverence for the person I have become. Wishing for a different parallel universe in which he would have been able to do the same for Cole while I still marvel at how amazing Jacob would have been at this age and how amazing Ben became when he turned forty and Lochlan too a few years ago now, it is almost like arriving. I kind of like that I still have all these freckles and even the lines around my eyes which in all honesty have been there forever, and I like that I'm part of the club now instead of the little tiny girl always lagging behind picking flowers while the big older boys walked on ahead, yelling at me to hurry up already, Fidget, we're going to be late.
I really never cared if we were late in the first place. They didn't either but what was astounding was how they didn't care that an eight-year-old girl imprinted on the lot of them and that she is still following them around thirty-two years later, lagging behind, being goofy and difficult but so sweet and soft that the rest is canceled out. In fact, they welcome me, just as they welcome bearing witness to all the changes I have seen in myself since I was too young to count high enough to know the number of freckles I own.
Never in a million freckles did I ever think I'd see this year but now that I've seen it, now that I'm wearing it, it doesn't seem all that frightening any more.
So, so you think you can tell heaven from hell,
blue skies from pain.
Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?
And did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war
for a lead role in a cage?