{"id":12,"date":"2009-04-11T20:51:35","date_gmt":"2009-04-12T03:51:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/basweeney.com\/writings\/?p=12"},"modified":"2009-05-04T10:29:34","modified_gmt":"2009-05-04T17:29:34","slug":"approaching-a-birthday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/basweeney.com\/writings\/?p=12","title":{"rendered":"Approaching a Birthday"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Barbara Sweeney<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cI had expected to be more than this.\u00a0 I had not expected to<br \/>\nbe an ordinary woman.\u201d<br \/>\n<\/em>Lucille Clifton, 38th Year<\/p>\n<p>You always know where to find me.<br \/>\nSometimes I sit in a different chair,<br \/>\nbut essentially things haven\u2019t changed.<br \/>\nI would still accept<br \/>\na Pulitzer Prize.<br \/>\nThis year you\u2019ve found me just returned<br \/>\nfrom a trip to Mexico distinguished<br \/>\nby four people from Cincinnati who snorted<br \/>\nnose drops in tandem.<br \/>\nI\u2019ve started doing a sit-up for every year,<br \/>\nsweeping away termite wings<br \/>\nand duplicating the movements of women everywhere<br \/>\nas they fold clothes in the dark.<br \/>\nAt night now, there are fewer cats<br \/>\ncrunching in the mulberry leaves,<br \/>\nand stars blur in front of my first pair of glasses.<br \/>\nThis year I stole old doors<br \/>\nfor a new house.\u00a0 I learned that<br \/>\ntwo-year-olds will spend hours<br \/>\npeeling white glue off their knees.<\/p>\n<p>A captioned photo of an actor<br \/>\nin spats and a straightjacket hangs<br \/>\nin my kitchen.\u00a0 It reads, \u201cGet me<br \/>\nout of here.\u00a0 I can make you rich and strong,<br \/>\nstrong and rich.\u201d<br \/>\nThis year you\u2019ve caught me lining up<br \/>\nmy accomplishments into a row of minor works:<br \/>\na crowd of birds on a piazza floor<br \/>\nhurrying across the tiles,<br \/>\nscrambling up the crumbs.<\/p>\n<p><em>Appeared in The Malahat Review;<br \/>\nNumber 63, October, 1982<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Barbara Sweeney \u201cI had expected to be more than this.\u00a0 I had not expected to be an ordinary woman.\u201d Lucille Clifton, 38th Year You always know where to find me. Sometimes I sit in a different chair, but essentially things haven\u2019t changed. I would still accept a Pulitzer Prize. This year you\u2019ve found me [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-approaching_a_birthday","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/basweeney.com\/writings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/basweeney.com\/writings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/basweeney.com\/writings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/basweeney.com\/writings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/basweeney.com\/writings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/basweeney.com\/writings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72,"href":"http:\/\/basweeney.com\/writings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12\/revisions\/72"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/basweeney.com\/writings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/basweeney.com\/writings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/basweeney.com\/writings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}