Half Birthday

The good thing about having a birthday in early February is that it comes quickly - ripped off like a fresh bandage. No long buildup, no mounting anticipation, no ballooning expectations. Just a sudden arrival, a day or two of attention, and then back to life as usual.

The bad thing is that your wish has nearly eleven months to let you down. That’s plenty of time to watch your life move forward, unchanged, no matter how tightly you close your eyes during your birthday wish or how fiercely you believe.

Today is August 12th. My half birthday. And, in true type-A fashion, I decided it was time to check in on my wish. To see if there’s any chance it will come true before I make my 34th.

I flip open my datebook. The first half of the year has been busy... not with my milestones, but with those of the people I love. Each one bright, vivid, and pulling my attention further from my own wish. But in turning each page, I also realize I’ve been in the middle of other people’s wishes coming true - standing beside them, helping them celebrate, and witnessing their joy.

March 8 — Caroline’s Shower

One of my closest friends, Caroline, asked me to be her maid of honor, and then, a few weeks later, her officiant. I’ve known her since we were, what felt like girls, and we've stuck by each other into womanhood. We’ve moved together through breakups, first jobs, bad apartments, and all the small heartbreaks and little triumphs that shape your twenties. Now, she wanted me beside her for one of the most important moments of her life.

Her two Southern, sassy-but-sweet aunts and her mother and I threw her a tea party shower in her hometown. I greeted guests, topped off champagne glasses, arranged flowers, and sidestepped questions about my own love life with the well-practiced smile of someone used to being asked. I watched her laugh, glowing in the way only brides do, and I thought about what it meant that she wanted me there - not just as a witness, but as the one to guide her into her marriage. That’s a kind of love not everyone gets to have.

April 15 — Adoption Day

When my sister and her husband traveled to Oklahoma to adopt their son, I stayed with my four-year-old niece, May. For a week, our little world was just the two of us - pancakes in the morning, living-room dance parties in the afternoon, story time before bed. She’d wrap her arms around my neck, her hair still damp from the bath, her Bluey pajamas warm against me, and whisper, “I’m so glad you’re here.”

When my sister walked back through the door, she was holding a baby boy swaddled in soft blue. My nephew. My heart caught in my chest in that split second. The quiet awe of watching a family grow right before my eyes. I had come to help, but I left feeling something deeper. That I belonged to this moment, to these people, in a way that would last forever.

May 11 — Mother’s Day

I visited my mom in Georgia, where she’s built a life she fills with bridge games, book clubs, and yoga classes. She’s warm and gracious, but I can still feel the quiet outlines of dreams she never got to live. She doesn’t talk about them much... maybe she doesn’t need to.

While thrifting together, I found a little spice jar shaped like a tiny house. I joked that it was the only thing I’d register for if I ever got married. A week later, a package arrived: the complete set, tracked down online, with a note that read, “No need to wait for a wedding.”

I opened it alone in my kitchen, and felt the weight of what she’d done - how she had been listening, really listening, and wanted me to have something simply because it mattered to me. In that moment, I realized she had been giving me that kind of love my whole life: not flashy, not loud, but steady and deliberate.

June 14 — Boston Visit

I flew to Boston to see Robby, my friend of more than a decade, and his husband. Boston was my first home after college, and Robby and I shared three years of it together before he met the love of his life. Our friendship has always been like a sibling bond. Sturdy, unshakable, full of old inside jokes and the comfort of knowing someone so well you don’t need to fill the silences.

This trip, he stocked the fridge with gluten-free snacks, remembering my new allergy diagnosis, before I arrived. He let me win a game of mahjong after twelve straight losses, pretending not to notice his deliberate mistake. He drove me to the airport late at night after a day filled with some of our favorite things, and at 2 a.m., when my plane landed, my phone lit up with a text: Home yet? Loved our visit.

It was a small thing. But the kind of small thing that stays with you - a reminder that someone’s love can be woven into everyday gestures, compounding over time, so quietly you almost miss it if you’re not paying attention.

July 5 — Portland Baby

My dear friend Becca, only a few months into motherhood, invited me to visit. She was a little tired but entirely tender, moving through her days with a gentleness that seemed stitched into her now. We spent the week in her sun-lit kitchen, folding tiny onesies still warm from the dryer, talking over slow, homemade meals, and tending to her baby together.

She had a new kind of glow. A softness that lived in the way she rocked her baby, the way she looked at her as if still marveling that she was real. She also told me about the hard parts: her changing body, the parts of her old life she missed, the way time felt both endless and fleeting.

In her honesty, I felt a rare kind of trust. The kind that lets you see a friend as she truly is, unguarded and fully human. With her baby asleep on my chest, her tiny hand curled against my collarbone, I felt a love that wasn’t just mine. It was shared. Passed quietly between us, linking me to her, to the new baby, and to the long lineage of women who have held each other through moments like this. A love that moves outward in widening circles, touching more than just one life.

September - December

Looking ahead, the rest of calendar is full: three weddings, two baby showers, an adoption party, six birthdays, an engagement celebration, and a going-away gathering.

My birthday wish, the one I’ve been quietly guarding, was to find love. The romantic kind. The kind from the movies. By the numbers, it’s unlikely to happen before my next candle is blown out.

But as I write this, I realize my wish wasn’t as literal as I thought. I asked for love, and love came.

Again and again.

It came in a friend’s trust to stand beside her at the altar.

In my niece’s damp-haired hugs.

In a box of tiny spice-house jars from my mother.

In gluten-free snacks and late-night texts.

In a newborn’s sleepy breath on my chest.

It wasn’t the love I pictured. But it was love that was here, all along.

Surrounding me in shapes I never thought to imagine. And if love has taught me anything, it’s that it doesn’t always arrive in the form you expect.

When my next birthday comes, I might make my wish more specific. Or maybe I’ll keep it the same.

Because halfway through the year, I’ve learned something important.

Sometimes, the heart already has what it’s been asking for - it just needs a little time to notice.