May 29, 2009 "93"

For my 36th birthday, my husband baked me a chocolate cake and adorned it with two candles, one a 3 and the other a 6. Not only was it my birthday, it was also an anniversary of sorts. A year before, almost to the day, was when I had my mastectomy. A year before, I was spending my 35th birthday recovering in the hospital.
The next day while in the kitchen I noticed the candles on the counter next to the sink. They were rearranged into the number 63. Hmmmm… Would I make it to 63? Having quickly learned that life has no guarantees, I was thinking that to get to at least 63 wouldn’t be so bad.

Sometime later, I returned to that same spot and while washing my hands I stared at those numbers again. No. Actually 63 would be bad. Getting to 63 wouldn’t be good enough. I flipped the 6 turning it into a 9 and in less than a second I added 30 more years to my life. Now that was a number I could live with.

I have always remembered that moment and when I was trying to come up with a name for this blog I kept going back to that number, 93. Then the number 93 began showing up everywhere in my life. Clint and I got married in 1993. Porter is currently 9 and Parker just turned 3. If you take 3 away from 9 you get six, which is the number of years between Porter and Parker. Clint was 39 until just a few of weeks ago. The letters in Porter’s, Parker’s and my first and last names add up to 9. In 1993, I was 21 and Clint was 24. If you add 2+1+2+4, you get 9. And 24-21 = 3. (When did I become such a numbers geek?) I taught middle school for 9 years before switching to pre-school for 3 years, now I’m back in middle school. We lived in our first house for 9 years, and this July will be 3 years in our current home. As a child I went to school in District 93.

Of course when I tried to get the domain name of ninety-three, ninetythree, or 93, they were all taken. So after some “figuring” I ended up with 31times3, which equals 93. Also, my birthday is the 31st day of the 3rd month. I could probably keep going with how these numbers relate to my life but I’m sure you get the idea by now. And most importantly the name of my blog serves as a reminder of the life I have ahead of me. I only have to consider the the part of my life I’ve already lived to know that the future will be unpredictable and challenging, but I know without a doubt that it will also be magnificent and rewarding. Cheers to life!