Today I Turn 38, and I'm Still Excited About Everything at Once

Today I turn thirty-eight. The phrase that has followed me since childhood arrives with the morning light, unbidden as always: “You sometimes get excited about everything at once.” It was never said to wound, but it wounded anyway, the way only the truth can. I was six, maybe seven, the first time I heard it, breathless from explaining my newest plan: a fish farm in the courtyard, a library in the…