Power Hour

Nine years ago today, I was in a rustic cabin on a mountain in New York.  It was a summer camp.  Like all the other staff, I had arrived early to prepare before hundreds of children from the shelters and foster care systems of Newark and NYC came flooding in.  Which nothing at all could have prepared me for, but there I was.  The others had gone on a team-building camp-out.  But as the medical director, I had to stay put in case there was some kind of emergency and someone had to be rushed back to the clinic. No one did. 
All of my friends back at college spent the eve of their 21st birthdays partying and staying up until midnight to have their "power hour"; drinking like a loon the minute they turned the magical legal drinking age of 21. Not something I was at all opposed to at the time, I might add.
Me?  There I was, many miles from the nearest party scene or alcoholic beverage, turning 21 at midnight in a sleeping bag on a rusted cot.  With no one around at all except for Speedy, the mouse who shared my room that summer.  It wasn't quite what I'd had in mind. 
But though it was by no means my first job, it was one I'd worked really hard for.  It was the first one I had sought out, applied and interviewed and been hired for, without a bit of help from anyone.  I hadn't known it was a Director's position until I arrived, and it was my first job being In Charge of something- with no guidance, no on-the-job training, no supervisor to tell me how to do it.  It was by far the most responsibility I'd ever had. It was the first time I'd been so far from home for so long. It was the first time I had cohabitated with a rodent.
That summer turned out to be life-changing for me. When I sat up till midnight that first week of it, watching myself turn 21, I knew it would be.  I was excited, I was proud. I felt ready to be Grown Up.  Ready to be part of something much bigger than what party to go to on Friday night.  Ready to believe in myself. 
I thought about all of those things as Speedy and I watched the moon rise high.  And I realized that I was experiencing the gift of a Power Hour that lived up to its name.  I still think of it as one of the best birthdays I ever had.
Tonight my kids are sleeping restlessly after a loooong day of fevers and vomit and boogers and tears.  I've scrubbed the soup pot, I've mopped the floors.  Far from some night-club "dirty thirty" extravaganza, I'll probably ring in my new decade in a rocking chair under a hot sweaty toddler, feeling snot ooze down my shoulder.  My friends and family, even my husband, won't be around to set any confections on fire for me, and my three-year old wept in pity tonight that I was having a birthday and there would be no party. 
Now.  I did have a high-style celebration already, and I'm swimming in cards over here.  But even if those things things were not there, my three-year-old wept for me. Because she loves me so.  Far from being alone, I have two of my favorite humans on earth by my side this birthday, and germy as they may be they are mine. As tired and cranky and sick of cockroaches and boxes as we all are, we are together and we are doing fine. 
This milestone birthday in many ways reminds me of the one I spent on that mountain.  It's the first time I've lived alone (without another grown up) in my whole life.  Ever.  It's my first real go at parenting and house-running and bill-paying and living without a partner to back me up.  My first time to try to help my child through something that really, truly hurts Her.  It's again a new level of personal responsibility, a new and foreign terrain, a feeling of being on my own to Figure It Out. 
And, just like last time, I'm not sorry. 
Like before I feel ready to learn, and stretch and grow, ready to jump into the next year (decade!) stronger and wiser and faster and more able.  Ready to believe in myself.  I suppose with all the gooey stuff my kids are exuding tonight, I could still call it a dirty thirty and be technically accurate.  But instead I think I'll just reach back to that 21st birthday and have myself another Power Hour. 
In three hours I'll be another year older, another decade older. I'm celebrating on my own. Because I know how to do that now- be on my own. Celebrate myself.  In the morning mirror I'll see some wrinkles here and there; I'll see the gray hairs creeping in.  I'll also take a step back, take in the bigger picture.  And see that power there, too. 
Happy 30th birthday to myself.  It's going to rock.