The first birthday I remember feeling true angst about was my thirteenth. There seems to be a lot of build up to the thirteenth birthday. I’m sure many of us (mainly girls, probably) remember our uncles and aunts, our parent’s friends and adults who are a bit awkward with kids saying things like, “Big 13 this year, huh?” or, “Ready to be a teenager?”

There are birthdays and then there are birthdays. There are some birthdays, like 13, that signify the “end” of childhood. Although, I think many would agree this is a nebulous age —a sort of limbic space between childhood and adulthood. There is the 16th which, in American culture anyways seems to coincide with the newfound freedom of the open road. There is 18 (woo-hoo adulthood!) and 21 (no more fake IDs!) and of course there is 30. It seems the rest start to blur into one.

On my ninth birthday, my mom decorated our dining table with a parade of plastic animal figurines. A tiger, an elephant, and a polar bear with teeth and black gums bared, are the ones that stick out in my mind. That evening my entire family, my dad and mom, my little brother and I went to the Barnum and Bailey circus.

On my 18th birthday my mom and I spent the day at a cottage spa. The woman who gave my mom a pedicure told her she had “summer feet.” She remarked on how perfect the half-moons of her toes were, and I remember how it made my mom smile the rest of the day.

On my 21st birthday, my mom took me on a roadtrip to New Hope, Pennsylvania — a little artists’ colony tucked into the eastern part of the state. It was just the two of us, and we stayed in a bed and breakfast which smelled like a perfect 1:1 ratio of maple syrup and Joann Fabrics. We browsed the New Hope galleries all day, and on the evening of my birthday we went to a creole restaurant which had taken up residence in an old, stone church. I ordered wine and when the waitress didn’t blink, my mom made her check my ID — for the ceremony of it, of course.

On my 30th birthday my parents, my cousin, my now-husband, Michael, and a friend went to New Orleans for a week. I was born in New Orleans, and it was a bit of a homecoming. My dad treated us to a 5-star dinner at the Commander’s Palace where once upon a time he and my mom, who was pregnant with me, had dinner. The restaurant had kept all their paper guest records, and all those years later, when my mom called to book us for my birthday dinner, they still had their 30-year-old reservation information. We continued to eat our way through the town. We drenched ourselves in music and buttered everything. We ate beignets, of course, and tubs of crawfish on tables covered in newspaper. Michael and I had a near-religious experience at a place called Vaughn’s where we scooped red beans and rice from a community slow cooker into little styrofoam bowls and danced until three am. We visited night markets. I bought an ink block print of a nude woman reclining on a couch surrounded by birds.

For some strange reason, I have absolutely no memory of what I did for my thirteenth birthday. What I do remember is the anxiety around the idea that in just a day, with just one more added candle, I would suddenly become someone or something else entirely. I remember feeling like I was crossing through a door I could never back out of. I suppose this is just another meditation on time — or maybe less of a mediation and more of a rebellion. A fear of change and transition.

On August 6th, my daughter turned one, and not since my thirteenth birthday have I felt such angst. With each passing week and month I felt myself digging my heels in. All year I wanted to memorize every bit her, every changing expression and every new discovery. It took me nearly the entire last twelve months to realize the discomfort I was feeling was a fear of forgetting — if I didn’t record it or capture it in some way, I’d lose it forever. And trust me, I’ve recorded. I’ve drawn her countless times. I’ve sketched and journaled and taken an embarrassing amount of photos. It never seems to be enough.

In some ways, the brevity of infancy alongside the intensity of my awareness of it all makes it seem much worse than turning thirteen. Waking up to a “toddler” felt infinitely more uncomfortable than waking up as a “teenager.” The internet doesn’t help my case either. I swear the algorithms don’t just listen to your conversations anymore. It’s like they’ve trained some crazy AI bots to hear your thoughts and greatest fears. Increasingly, this psychic monster fed me videos captioned with things like: “You only have a newborn for SEVEN short weeks,” “Don’t blink — only 11 months of babyhood, then you have a toddler.”

God help me if I hear the phrase, “Don’t blink” or “It goes fast” one more time.

Toddler. Teenager. These are just labels, of course. It helps us mark and understand time and development. But for someone like me, someone who struggles with transition and change, it’s anxiety-inducing. We don’t change so perceptively, overnight — but still, we’re all changing, growing, dying, all the time. I can only imagine what all the individuals who are much more grounded and emotionally balanced people than I might think while reading this — trust me, there’s even a part of myself who can’t help but roll her eyes: Good grief girl, get a hold of yourself. I know, I know. This is me trying. And yet, here it is. It seems having children just gives you more opportunities to confront yourself.

The first year with the first baby seems to be the longest and shortest year. They change so fast it’s hard to catch your breath. You’ve changed so fast.

In the weeks leading up to her birthday I was struck with another feeling, too. That somewhere in this strange mix of joy and grief was the sense her first birthday also marked another kind of birthday…

When she was born, I permanently walked through yet another door, and the version of the person I was before her ended. In its place a new person — a new mother — someone I’d never been before, was born alongside her. I can never again not be her mother. This is the most devastatingly beautiful, and the most terrifying fact of my existence.

For all mothers these births are inextricably linked. Every birthday signals a beginning and an end. A making and an unmaking. There are gifts within each that I need to learn to receive with gladness.

We celebrated her birthday on a Saturday near the river, under two big trees, with friends and family. The heat broke and it rained. In between showers our friends played cornhole and raced each other. All of her people held her. We ate charcuterie and watermelon and carrot cake muffins with cream cheese frosting. We blew bubbles around her, and we drank, of course. Her Uncle Joe made her a beautiful Princess Torte. Green marzipan with pink sugared roses. It was too windy to light the candle, but it didn’t matter, and everyone sang.

It would be a lie if I said I didn’t feel a little sad. All of it was a gift.