I AM 37

When I entered the second grade, my entire life changed. My parents had always wanted me in Catholic school, but it wasn't until then that a school bus was made available to my neighborhood to make their dream a reality. Their dream was my nightmare: I had to lose my friends, wear a uniform and go to a foreign place to learn about God every day instead of just sing about Him on Sundays. I cried the whole way there on my first day and then froze in silent horror when then car door opened. My shyness was suddenly compounded by fear. I shared polite smiles and nodded when people spoke to me, but words were all but lost.

Inside the classroom the organization began with our seating. It was alphabetical so I, who had sat front-row-center in my first grade class, had been relegated to the last seat in the last row of the classroom.  I felt like an outsider, an add-on, one who could easily be left out.

Our first assignment was to learn to cover our textbooks and put our "numbers" on them. Each one of us was given a number based on our alphabetical placing. I was 37.  To this day I can picture the brown paper covered book spines with the large black number 37 etched on it - those were my books. I was number 37. No one else ever was. In subsequent years, we lost students, so that I would eventually become 36 (it felt so wrong for me to be using all of Michael T.'s books that year), but never did we ever get more students. No one else would ever be 37.

Since that labeling, the number 37 has always held an awkwardly special place in my heart. It was "my thing" in that new school: I was last. Last in the seating, last to come to the school, last to be finished copying the notes from the board, last to be done with a test and, as a rider of the "Green" bus which was notoriously late, many times I was the last one in school. However, in all that finality, there was also a uniqueness because no one else could be me - not in reality, nor in our silly numbered system.

This past Saturday was my birthday and with it came a familiar label than makes me feel like this is a year I have been waiting for nearly thirty years. I am 37 years old. In other words, after all these years, I am 37 all over again.

What does it mean for me? It feels right. And, based on the month leading up to it, it also feels like I might be able to take hold of the reigns of my life again and get moving in the direction I originally intended with this adult life. Just like back in the second grade, I may be the last one to get to all of the finish lines we set out before ourselves, but that doesn't mean I won't get there. I am 37 and my time has finally come.