Age is just a number

I feel like I've celebrated my 30th birthday 9 times.

Wherever I go and whomever I meet, people always chop a few years off my age when I ask them to guess how old I am. When I was 18 and people thought I was 14, I hated it.  When I was 21 and people thought I was 16, it annoyed me.When I was 25 and people thought I was 18, I wished I could look older...Now I love that no one can ever guess my real age...

Today I took the kids to gymboree at the community center down the street. It's a perfect opportunity for my sweet, energetic and precocious little boy to use up some of his boundless energy. My little girl typically sleeps in the stroller while I watch the little guy climb, roll, run around and have the time of his life.

It's also a great opportunity for moms to meet up and shoot the breeze for an hour plus.

Today, I found myself shooting the breeze with a couple of mamas when the subject of age came up (it was one of the mamas' birthdays). In my typical fashion, when asked how old I am, I asked them to guess. The guess was 32. My first response was: "Wow, can I hug you?". When I told them my age(39), they were shocked. So much so, that in unison, all I could hear was "Shut up! No way! You're lying!". To think that twenty years ago, that response would have been insulting...Both women went on to say that I look and act so much younger...

In 1999, I married my high school sweetheart. During our marriage, I started to feel a strong pull towards being observant( I didn't grow up religious). It became clear very early on, that if I wanted to go on that kind of spiritual journey, I was on my own. My husband had no interest in joining me. Each one of us tried compromising, but after some time, we admitted the painful truth: that we weren't making compromises, but rather we were COMPROMISING who we each were as people. After two very painful years of trying to square a circle, we decided that we needed to let each other go. And we did.The end of my first marriage was the beginning of me finding the true calling of my heart and soul...A life of committed and passionate Judaism. A life of TRUTH.

I went to Jewish day schools from my elementary years all the way through high school, so I had a good baseline to start from. In elementary school, they had taught us how to pray, so when I started praying every day, all the tunes and melodies I had learned as a child came back to me in a hurry...It was as though they were all stored in a safe place deep within my soul, just waiting for the spark to be ignited. In 2004, equipped with the belief and the knowledge that the only real home for a Jew is Israel, I got on a plane, left my very comfortable life in Vancouver and made Aliyah (moved to Israel). Three and a half years later, when I was almost 37, I met my husband, a sweet and kind FFB(FrummieFromBirth: he grew up in a religious home). On Aug 11, 2008, exactly 4 years TO THE DAY since I had made Aliyah, I married my soul mate. The man who is the father of my two precious babies. The man who values the Truth as much as I do. The man whose ideals and values are so much in sync with mine...

August is a busy month. It'll be seven years since I made Aliyah. Three years since I married Hubby. And on August 9th, although I truly feel like my life began when I married my husband, I will be turning forty. WOW. It's hard to even SAY that number.

I have a one and a half year old and a three month old. I don't feel a day older than 30.  I feel young. I feel like G-d blesses me with tremendous strength and a lot of youthfulness on a daily basis. I truly believe that attitude and outlook are the key ingredients for how old we appear to the world around us.

After all, age really is just a number.

With Love,

Cigal