Thoughts on a 39th Birthday

I turn thirty-nine years old today.

I turn thirty-nine years old today.

It won’t be today, of course, the day you are reading this. It’ll be a few days after today. Probably Friday.

Today’s today, the day I am writing this, is November 4, 2020 — which means that nobody will really want to read this today, the only thing any of us really want to read is some kind of confirmed statement about the presidential election, and none of us are going to get that today.

Probably not even by Friday.

Every year on my birthday I take a picture of myself, generally tagged “this is what 39 looks like” or whatever the appropriate age is. A borrowing of Gloria Steinem.

Here is what 38 looked like:

And here is 39:

I could have taken a posed one, like I did last year. With a respectable professional-person blouse and very red lipstick. I could have taken a series of selfies until I…