On Turning 27 in August
Today marks the start of that last grand stand. The sun shines in its annual radiant defiance, throwing up its brightest rays to blind you — a challenge before the inevitable sweep of autumn steals our hearts away. It’s true, you know, that autumn is so much easier to love, with its gentle wind and wet leaves. You’ll feel it whisper against your brow, and you’ll sigh into its comfort.
You’ll hear the crisp of rained-on leaves underfoot, and just like that, you’ll forget how August burned for you, how it scorched love and challenge and strength in deep gashes across your heart, how you never felt more of your body and more of your spirit than when you were gasping for air through a mid-August heat wave.
Go on, think of autumn.
Just don’t forget that water is never sweeter than on an orange August afternoon.
Today marks the start of the year where I will scribble in 2 and 7 in the blank space where they ask my age on every form at every airport customs counter and restaurant feedback card, to hand in to potential employers and potential husbands. As I tear away July, more than half the year is done. With August, I start anew. Like a schoolteacher at day end, I dutifully wipe away the mess of tears and old dreams. I march into August with a body covered in a salt-sheen of victorious sweat, fire snaking up my calves, curling against my lungs — this urgent burn signals victory — I’ve made it. The finish line is behind me. This is definite-victory, the sweetest almost-defeat.
Today marks the first year I have looked at myself in the mirror and thought, “What am I doing with my life?”
The question is equal parts troubling and delightful. Troubling is the half that’s easiest to understand. 2 and 7 throw into sharp relief the inevitable inching forwards of 3 and 0, 5 and 0, the flat line at the end of an EKG. 2 and 7 remind me — and I am always surprised — that 2 and 6 years have swum by; the further away they are, the blurrier they seem in my mind.
2 and 7 come with new rules. Coworkers will now hesitate before they joke about old age and marriage. Employers will no longer see me as potential to be Play-Doh-molded, but as a tool evaluated on its pre-set configurations. Aunts will now inquire about my age in only a round-about way: oohs and achaas when they hear the answer they already knew, or never needed to know in the first place. 2 and 7 bring less questions spoken with lips and even more sent out in furtive glances.
But 2 and 7 somehow feel like the pillars reinforcing my foundation, more a home than 2 and 6 or 2 and 5 ever did. 2 and 7 feel like a robust set of good-for-babies and good-for-loving hips, a column of ribs stacked for solidity, legs like stalks holding firmly to the earth. 2 and 7 feel like there’s August fire in my eyes, August heat in my bones, August warmth in my heart. So when I look at this palace, this body, this face, these window-eyes — these 2 and 7 doorways leading to the year ahead, I ask mirror-me: What the hell am I doing with my life?
But maybe what I am trying to ask myself is, What next, darling? The way you would ask a lover, hand-on-cheek, voice both tender and sure.
Because somehow this August feels like I might not know where I’m going next, but I also know exactly where I’ve been, the pace at which I can go forward, the strength of the legs that can take me, the breadth of the love I can give. I’ve never been surer of the sudden flutter-kick of a heart enraptured, the caught-breath of disappointment, the wire-cords of this body that will get back up, get back up, get back up.
It’s too early, at 2 and 7 to worry about weakness. I am too young, still, to feel the ache of unfaithful limbs that don’t respond when called. And it is too early, still, to taste the sour slip of loneliness between lips and soul. So this August, with mangoes sticky-slipping between fingers, their skins twisted to juice out pulp, their sweetness manipulated with milk, water, cream — in this August, I do not feel the stuffed-to-the-seams ambition that carried me through 2 and 6, and I do not feel the metal braces that slowed my ascent at 2 and 5. In this August, I feel only at home in the heat, ripe, but not aching to burst,
— at home in this body, every inch slick with labor,
— at home in this mind, a dance well worn into my heels,
— at home in this heart, beating a steady vibration.
This August, I am 2 and 7. This August, I am more myself than I have ever been.
Next August, I will be different, but this August is now —
and for now, I am whole.
