Reasons for cupcakes

As a kid, birthdays often mean desserts, presents, the power to control the world for a day. And even if it wasn’t your birthday, you might have been industrious enough to latch onto some other kid’s party to get a cupcake or two. In essence, birthdays are all about indulgence. For the most part, that attitude remains as you get older, though birthdays can take on a double edge as digits increase. Somewhere around my late 20s, birthdays started to feature cupcakes and cocktails accompanied by questions: Am I leading the life I want to live? Do I have any regrets? What do I want to tackle next?

I turned 29 last month. My boyfriend, Seth, surprised me with an overnight trip to Letchworth State Park, a place known as the Grand Canyon of the East that includes some of the largest waterfalls in New York and more than 14,000 acres of manicured land varying in elevation and in terrain (seriously, whoever is in charge of mowing the park must have OCD or psychopathic tendencies).

Before dinner, we enjoyed a sunset picnic of wine and trail nuts against the backdrop of a 75-foot waterfall. The Italian wine we’d saved for the day may have looked like urine, and it may have been necessary to gulp down a full glass before “enjoying” the rest, but it didn’t detract from the celebration (or interfere with my agility in the 3-inch heels I wore to scale the rocky slopes to the park’s restaurant later that night). The next morning we took a city girl-friendly hike to a bridge overlooking the waterfalls where we encountered a vulture and, on our way down, we nearly bumped into a crouched hiker with his pants around his ankles doing…well, you can guess. Let’s just say the vulture was much more hygienic.

Pooping hiker aside, the park was simply breathtaking and quite persuasive as a backdrop for the birthday questions. Since my 28th, I’ve relished cleaner air, more fresh foods, more wine, more fitness and, best of all, more time to take it all in. To get here, I’d left a full-time job I didn’t love to find a new career path. I’d moved out of a first-floor, three-bedroom apartment in noisy West Harlem to live with my boyfriend in a quieter single-bedroom apartment in wine country. And in spite of the potentially damaging effects of morning breath, grouchiness and bed head, Seth and I still seem to like each other.

Sounds so perfect, it just might make cynics puke, right? Before that happens, however, I must admit I still have unanswered questions, from the more broad—What’s next?—to the minor—Will I learn how to drive stick shift without wrecking a car or giving Seth a heart attack? Those can wait for the next birthday party, and in the meantime, I’ll have a cupcake or two.