Birthday Musings

Some might consider February to be one of the dreariest months. It is cold, it is gray, it is damp.

But if you know me, then you know how I like cold, and gray, and damp. I like rainy days. And February also means Valentine’s Day and World Nutella Day. And my birthday.

So, there you have it. February is a GREAT month.

This morning in our family WhatsApp group, in honor of my birthday my aunt posted a photo of me taken many years ago while studying abroad in Spain. We were at the Royal Palace of la Granja in Segovia, and posing with me are Michele (an Italian student from Padova) and David (who was in my study group)—and I only remember their names because my aunt also included the back of the photo where I had written these details.

Now, I do not know what happened to Michele, and the only thing I remember about David was that he was AWFUL in Spanish (like, REALLY REALLY awful),  but I look back at that young college student posing with these two guys and I have several thoughts: it was, for me, a good hair day; I was wearing a pair of navy, linen shorts I had purchased at the mall; OH MY GOSH I spent a summer in Spain; and that I loved that shirt.

What in the heck happened to that shirt?!?

But with old photos comes a little reminiscing and more than a little nostalgia. Memories are a funny thing. There are those you will remember to your dying day, those you want to forget, and those you did not mean to forget but did, and now you are trying to call them forth. Then there are the emotive memories, the ones that have been reduced to a single emotion—the happy, sad, embarrassing, funny, scary.

And this old photo reminded me of a time which held all the above.

The early twenties can be intense, you know?

Memories are also fluid. I can merge the memory of who I was then with who I am now, and despite the years that have passed I can say that today, on my birthday, I am one and the same: just a little older, none the wiser (but still learning), I still have crazy hair, my passport is always ready and waiting for the next great travel adventure …

and I still like that shirt.