“Happy Birthday! Embrace this life-changing year, Wai Jia!
Today, I turn 25.
Twenty-five. It’s an in-between year isn’t it? After the rocky years of pubescence and finally climbing one’s steep way up the cliffs of adulthood, one finally reaches a restpoint, takes a breather, and says, Phew, here’s twenty-five. A short breather, a sort of quiet hideaway from the demands of the world for a while, after one has clawed through the obstacles of growing up, before one approaches the other forbidding peaks of thirty-hood, what with all its responsibilities of work, parenthood and making one’s mark.
Twenty-five. It’s in-between youth and adulthood. I am what they call a young adult, like sort of a discount from an old adult. You get the opportunity to make mistakes. People forgive you if you haven’t figured out income tax and how expensive housing is. Mediocrity is not rapped on its knuckles, and its also the perfect time to shine. I suppose, it was why the both the youth and adult divisions of Health Promotion Board invited me to be there for their youth and adult events. I felt I could relate to both of them too.
Twenty-five. A breather before the next leap.
I guess that’s why I really wanted a quiet birthday this year. Instead of a big hulabaloo over-the-top birthday party like the unexpected 70-man show party last year, I requested for a quiet early celebration with friends last weekend. My friends surprised me, as they do every year- this time, with gorgeous blood-red dahlias, sunshine-yellow calla liles and snow-white narcissus blooms, hand-written cards, lovely books, hand-made rainbow cupcakes and their precious company stolen from hundred-hour work weeks, tucked away in the most beautifully quaint restaurant, brushed with artistic touches in every corner.
But quiet? Who am I kidding, really? “Embrace this life-changing year, Wai Jia!”
It’s my first year having a birthday with what they call…a boyfriend. I prefer the word soul-mate, but it’s embarrassing to use these sort of words nowadays. Soul-mate, lover… such words belong to medieval times of chivalry, but I feel more embarrassed with the modern-day term, what with the frivolous connotations behind boyfriend, as if just one of many to come. He hadn’t read my post about roses yet, and there he was standing last weekend, with a coral rose in his hand, and I could tell, just a little upset it wasn’t as nice a rose as you had wished it to be. It was beautiful to me. It was a surprise to see you all dressed up for my birthday dinner, an even bigger surprise to see your gift to me- a spacious sky-blue photo album with photos of us hand-pasted and arranged like a scrap book inside. You surprise me all the time with your nostalgia and sentimentality. You are a rare find.
Life-changing. Twenty-five. In spite of the breather I feel I am taking, I have a feeling yet another upheaval will come in the second part of twenty-five, closer to twenty-six. There are terrifying M-words to come, Medicine (as I apply for career choices in specialties), Missions (as we explore a joint ministry), and perhaps, the most terrifying of all, Marriage, which will herald suffering and persecution of every sort and form I know possible. There will be battles to fight, mostly through prayer and tongue-holding, rather than with malice and sword-wielding. They keep telling us it is such a mistake, but we are still hopeful.
Hopeful. I look back on Twenty-four, Twenty-three, Nineteen, and Eighteen: life-changing birthdays where Kitesong and Rainbow were published, where I decided to choose missions, and God. People, too, kept saying they were mistakes. But they have been the best life decisions I have ever made. Last week, sitting at the front row of a public health forum of 500 people sharing Rainbow and my life, my dad said, how proud he was of me. So many years and tears were in between those words and what lay before- I will forever remember that.
Twenty-five. But it will be life-changing because of the 3 Ms. Medicine, Missions and Marriage (if it happens). I am now learning what it means to be independent, what money means, how much my parents have sown into my life and much I have to be thankful for all their sacrifice and love for me. It will mean living more simply, differently. It will mean moving out, letting go.
Twenty-five.
For all your prayers, friendship, love and support, thank you.