Fabulous

I’m teetering on the brink of fabulous. I’m two-thirds of the way there.

Yesterday I woke up to find a flower from my husband with a card that said, “Happy 8/12 Birthday.” (I remember just enough about math to know that’s the same as two-thirds.) Yep, two-thirds of the way between 39 and 40.

For the better part of my 30s, I’ve been preaching the gospel of “Fabulous at Forty” and writing “One step closer to Fabulous!” on my friends’ birthday cards. My reasoning was that most women in their 20s are trying to figure out their place in the world (and, let’s be honest, looking for a husband), and for a lot of us, our 30s are our little kid years: planning for them, making them, carry them, pushing them out, feeding them, changing them, teaching them, raising them. I started that journey at 28 ½ and end it, 11 years later, with my “baby” headed to preschool in the fall.

To get me through those chubby, sleep-deprived, sour-smelling years, I started dreaming about how fabulous I would be at 40. At the very least, I figured I would at least like my hair. Maybe have some grown-up furniture and drive a car with a sun roof? I’ll have time and energy to spend on me, right? I’ll have outgrown all those pesky sin issues, right? Maybe I'll even start eating vegetables. Yes, it will be fabulous. I will be fabulous.

So now that I’m here, teetering and all, what does it look like on the other side of 39? It certainly looks different. I’m moving for the first time since I turned 30. I’m giving away half of my household possessions and preparing to live in a much smaller place with no yard, no closets, no bathtub. (It does have air conditioning and room for the kids to rollerskate in the living room. Give and take.) I'm essentially unemployed. I spend the great majority of my time in a 1999 minivan. At 35, that would not have seemed so fabulous. But here’s the thing—at nearly 40, I’m more in tune with what really matters. I'm not so concerned about impressing people. I'm more concerned with who I am than what I do or how I look doing it. I’m more likely to feel joyful, no matter what my circumstances. I’m more thankful for the things I’ve got than disappointed in the things I haven’t got.

When October rolls around, I’ll still have stringy hair and jiggly arms. I’ll still make biting remarks that I regret and struggle with chronic impatience. But in the ways that are most important to me, I think I’m gonna be pretty darn fabulous.