On 44 ... (Bridget Jones style)

Weight: 127 (Two pounds above ideal, weight in hips seems to be settling in somewhat alarmingly different ways, acceptable overall)
Alcohol units: 1.5 (including three sample microbrew shots at mega liquor store)
Boyfriends: 0 to .3 (.3 being generous)
Job: 1
Number of times during job have held pleasant conversations with people who smell like urine: 13
Child: 1, 12 years, male. Still cuddly, interspersed with increasing moments of sassy
Pets: Three. One big, smelly, aggressive and aging dog; two young cats, one psychotic
Residences: 2
Mortgages: 3
Friends: Many
Problems: Relatively few
Confessions: 1. The above photo is from my 42nd birthday but I've been trying to figure out a way to work it into a blog and damned if it doesn't seem perfect here

This then, is my life at 44. I celebrated the big double-quad digits about a week ago. It was a boring birthday on the most boring day of the week: Tuesday. So I worked, like any other American on any other Tuesday in early June.

And in the evening, my son and I hopped Denver's light rail to downtown, where we wandered companionably along the 16th Street Mall. We ate a meal more remarkable for its people watching than its food on Chili's sidewalk cafe, spooned creamy gelato -- prompting memories of Italy -- from small plastic neon dishes, annoyed a security guard for sliding down slide-shaped outdoor architecture and reveled in the breezy, summer glory of an 85-degree post-sunset evening.

The mall's usual suspects did not disappoint us. Christmas, an elderly, Santa-hatted and wheelchaired man who parks outside the downtown Walgreen's most evenings, watched us coming. We kept walking, waiting, indeed hoping, for some recognition.

"Mother and son! It's a beautiful thing!" he cried. "Santa's watching, young man. Mind your manners, be nice to your mother, clean that scary room! Ha-ha-ha!"

Robby and I looked at one another and laughed. "How did he know we're mother and son?" I asked.

Robby rolled his eyes. "Well, duh," he said.

I thought about the pair of us, both thin, Robby tall for his age to my 5'9", our matching large, brown eyes, Robby's darkening hair. I took strange pleasure in the idea that we were recognizable as mother and child.

A black man as frightening for his height as his width leaned against a brick building a few blocks down. He, too, took us in as we approached.

"Love your mother!" he shouted to Robby. "She's all you got. Love her!"

I thought of stopping to point out that this child had a father as well, but it would have ruined the moment.

"Why are they all picking on you?" I asked him.

"Yeah! That's what I wanna know," he said in mock vexation.

We passed buskers, one playing a lone drum solo on two large white paint cans and one small metal one, another on trumpet, a pair of cellists. Flowers tumbled from hangers, foamed over the tops of planters, works of art every one. A horse-drawn carriage sailed smoothly down the street. In the carriage, a couple cuddled, smiles broad. Pedi-cabs - bicycles drawing small carriages of their own - passed us. One cyclist, standing on the pedals, calves bulging with effort, transported four teen-agers - a tangle of limbs and laughter - down the mall.

There was so much to see, yet I found pockets of time for reflection.

If anyone had told me a year ago the last half of my 43rd year would be so happy, I would not have believed them. Forty-three dawned fat with anxiety and unhappiness. I hated my job. The man I thought I loved responded to e-mail - our only remaining form of communication - sporadically, suggesting get-togethers upon which he never acted. Yet I could not let go. It darkened every corner of my life.

In December, I let go. In December, I reached out to another; six months later, we are still reaching out for one another.

I left for Italy hating my job. Inexplicably, I came back liking it.

In the last half of my 43rd year, I found a church I love.

And my son told me he wants to go to high school here, calming one of my greatest fears - the prospect of a court battle; still possible but with this pronouncement far less likely - of the last several years.

We lost a beloved pet during that tumultuous first half of 43. With the second half, we found two more, one of them spring-loaded with personality, so much so that I sometimes slip and call our new Pete by his irreplaceable predecessor's name, George.

New friends came and went, new friends came and stayed, old friends reconnected, old friends faded further.

I fell more deeply in love with my neighborhood, at the friends it yielded for my so-long-searching son.

I began to hate my car.

This then, is how 44 begins. Stay with me for the ride.