Thirty from TwennySicks

assalamu alaikum,

As I write this, I'm still 26.

Six and twenty years have passed in my life. And I'm still hoping for thirty.

Thirty, Mama said, is when "I was seriously grown.".
At thirty, according to some voices in Islam, youth has officially passed.

I don't know that maturity has necesarily skipped me, but I do know that I'm not done growing. And there are some years and times I want to call back and savor. Especially twenty four and twenty five. Lawd, 25 was hard from the beginning to the end, quite literally. Almost everyone forgot my 25th birthday; I worked all day and my boss got lost bringing me home in the DC heat. And then I went home and cried because no one loved me. And on my 26th birthday, I was at my grandmother's house... because she wasn't there. She was to be buried the next day.

*sigh*. SubHanAllah. Maybe by 30 I'll have finished sorting out the complex grief-guilt-relief mishmash I feel when I think about the mother of my mother.

Now I feel narcissistic.

That's not what I mean, though. I mean to be forward-thinking. Goal-oriented, even. And somewhere in me is still a little girl who dreams. At twenty-six.

I'm dreaming of a thirty-year old. Woman-me. Secure- more secure than today. Submitting, more than today. Loving- deeply. I dream of a tomorrow (or a not-quite-four-years) better than now. Nowhere near old. But certainly no child. Not even wanting to be, anymore.

Maybe I'll be mama? Wife? Proprietor? Prosperous? A singer. A nurse. A midwife. Professor, crafter. Rich and thin. Rich and fat. Certainly sexy, certainly all covered up.

Maybe I'll not have a dime to my name. Maybe I won't be writing here anymore. Maybe I'll have tasted the true bitterness of the tests we all face. Maybe I'll have become a bleak person. I don't know.

How wondrous and golden is the day I have yet to behold. It amazes me how delicious is something I have yet to taste!

One thing. If (and it won't happen) y'all catch me bemoaning the arrival of my third decade, whop me. Hard! AlHamdulIllah, what if I don't make it? Imette didn't make it. Gabriel didn't make it. Merlin didn't make it. Joy didn't make it. Not to thirty. How many deaths will I see before this day arrives? I am thankful and greatful for every beat of my heart, every action I can make, every wonder and even the atrocities I can see. Who knows? One day this post could be a missive from the grave.

All praise to ALlah for being able to speak, to even hint at His glory. Life is something I will never regret.

Even as I'm reaching for thirty.