What did you tell yourself you would never do? Only to realize, years later, as an old coot, that you’d gone ahead and done it? Or become it?

I’m curious.

I’m pushing 42 here. I’m hoping this age really is the answer to everything. I’ve already accumulated plenty of towels, AND I generally wait for other people to tell me when to panic. I must be on the right track.

As my birthday approaches, I find myself waxing a teensy bit nostalgic, a teensy bit regretful, and a whole lotta oh my dear Lord how did that happen?

I told myself I wasn’t a cat person.

I swore I’d never get divorced.

I predicted I’d have two boys.
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The bumblebee had a bun. The ladybug, her identical twin, had a clumsy mess of French braids, studded with plastic barrettes.

I panicked. My neon green T-shirt said “ASK ME!” The bumblebee, the ladybug and I were going to hear about this.

One of the dance recital police ladies approached, pointing at the bumblebee.

“Uh-oh,” said my daughter, the zebra.

“She’s going to need to go to the French-braiding station,” the dance recital police lady ordered.

“Um, I thought French braids or buns were acceptable, no?”

Dance recital police lady frowned. “Not for the actual performance. You’d better get her over to the French-braiding station. Like, now. There’s already a line.”

She summoned the ladybug to stand before her. The ladybug held her ground impressively.

“My mommy did French braids on me,” the ladybug told the dance recital police lady. “But she gave up when it was my sister’s turn because the French braids were too hard.”

The harried dance recital police officer considered this. I chewed my lip. All around us, little feathered yellow chickens and Sleeping Beauties and Cinderellas and jazzy tappers and Bibbity-Bobbity-Boo girls and parasol carriers and monkeys and kissy dolls and hip-hop Baby Beyonces were wreaking havoc, twirling and spinning and tearing their tights and spilling contraband items like Pepperidge Farms Goldfish.

Dance recital police lady decided to let ladybug’s subpar French braids go. She had bigger goldfish to fry. She scowled at me. “Tell her mother no plastic barrettes next time. They catch the light.”

“Will do,” I said.
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“Stay in your room,” they warn me. “We’ve got everything under control.”

“I’ll only come out if I smell smoke,” I say.

Five minutes later, Daughter #1 pops her head through my bedroom door. “Um, when you preheat the oven?”

“Yes?”

“Do you, like…leave it on? Once it gets to the right temperature?”

“Yes,” I say.

She nods and skips back down the stairs.

A moment later, Daughter #2 sticks her head into my room.

“You can’t hear what we’re talking about, right?” she says sternly.

“I really can’t,” I say.

“Would you even tell us if you could?”

“Well,” I say, pondering this. “I suppose if I thought you might be really disappointed, I might just not tell you.”

“But you didn’t hear.”

“Nope. I really didn’t.”

“Okay.” She hops downstairs to help her sister. Their dad dropped them off this morning with a bunch of mystery groceries, a nice gesture on his part, so they could make me breakfast for Mother’s Day.

I realize I am not actually worried that they will burn down the house. This is progress, I think. The kids are all right.
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I ask you: What did you not know that you needed to do this year, so far?

Funny story. Turns out I needed to drive four hours, meet my best friend from childhood at a god-forsaken hotel in the Twilight Zone of Pennsylvania, don purple workout gear, and dive belly-first into mud.

There was more, of course. I also needed to run 3.1 miles through hay bales and rocks and swampy bits and tires and over an 8-foot-high wall and a 35-foot-high cargo net. That was part of it.

Physics lesson: What goes up does not necessarily come down, at least, not right away. It’s scary at the top, when your legs and arms have turned to jelly.

I did eventually get down. And we crossed the finish line, in respectable time. And that’s when I realized, Oh, I needed to do that. I didn’t know it, but that’s exactly what I needed to do this year.
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