No matter how much I bellyache about turning a year older every year, I really do like birthdays.

They’re an excuse for me to bake birthday cakes—and really, there’s nothing like the look on someone’s face when they have those candles in front of them, the wishes held in their breaths. And when the candles are on a cake you made yourself, it’s pretty special, I tell you.

**S. and the birthday cake I made to look like her favorite candy—a giant pink Starburst!

Birthdays are also a chance for me to craft. I try to give handmade birthday gifts to friends as much as possible, whenever time allows me to. They’ve ranged from necklaces to earrings, aprons to tote bags. I like imagining how my gifts will be part of the everyday happinesses in a friend’s life in the coming year, until I get the chance to make a new gift again.

**I made A. and B. some handmade necklaces and had fun decorating their birthday boxes with punched-out paper dragonflies

As for my own birthdays, I mostly like them because of one selfish thing: my Birthday Wish List. I write one every year, something not a lot of people know. It’s kind of my thing—a fun, yearly exercise to take the dread out of getting older. Whether or not people ask me what I want, I like the idea of having a ready answer to, “So, what would you like this year?” Because there’s always that new cookbook I still don’t have, a sewing project I need fabric for, that purse I’ve been dreaming of for months and the red ballet flats that go with it. (Every girl needs a pair of red shoes!) I like the idea of naming things, of articulating my imaginings because you never know, some wishes were made to come true.

My birthday is this Friday, and I started out my birth month with a feeling of impending doom: Soon, I’ll be ___ years old, an age I couldn’t even imagine being when I first started writing my Wish Lists. In the Philippines, there’s a description about ages in Tagalog: “Lampas ka na sa kalendaryo.” It meant, “You’ve gone past the days of the calendar,” a solid, measurable, quantifiable sign that meant you were old. And yes, I hung on and dropped off the calendar’s precipice a while back.

So, to ward off the yearly birthday doldrums, and armed with a Post-it note, a pencil and a couple of wishes, I started my list. I posted it near my work monitor; looking at it everyday made me happy.

I would scratch things off to the list and add stuff in, scribbling randomly around the note whenever something popped into my head. So many fun things to look forward to! Maybe some new shoes? Aimee Bender’s new book? I was eager to post the wish list on my blog, a hint to anyone who was thinking of getting me something for my birthday. (Actually, someone’s already getting me #1-thanks, Alicia! You asked me about that book even before I wrote it down!)

But then something happened. Well, not just one thing, but these little ripples in the river of my everydays: I read my old journals and realized how different I am today from the girl who used to write these lists, I listened to friends about the things that broke their hearts and made them whole, I spent time with my family when my dad was here, I became a U.S. citizen after eight storied years of living in the States, I took a bad fall, sprained my ankle and was nursed back to health by E.

And I looked at my list last week and realized: All I really need, all that makes me happy, is something I didn’t need to wish for. I have many, MANY blessings I never even dreamed of when I was a kid. Don’t get me wrong—there are always wishes to make. But for the first time in years, I realized I didn’t want to wish for THINGS for me. Is this what growing up does to you? I realize that I have many friends and family who are always dealing with one challenge or another, and all I want, all I REALLY want for my birthday this year is for their wishes to have a chance in the world.

So, for anyone out there reading this who has ever whispered a wish to me (you know who you are as you go down my list!), your wish list is now MY Birthday Wish List. I write them out as a prayer, and when I blow out the candles on my birthday cake, if I DO have one, I’ll be making these wishes for you.

- I wish for the health of my parents and for the success of my brother. I want them to be around for a long time.

- I wish for E.’s happiness in every single way. For his family to be blessed. (I want them around for a long time, too!)

- I wish my single friends who are looking for love a fantastic, awesome journey to it. You know my story; wishes DO come true.

- I wish all my married friends trying to conceive an unending supply of hope. And then some more.

- I wish all my friends/family who do have children or are currently pregnant all the best in life that they hope for, for celebrations big and small, for belly laughs and silent, everyday joys.

And that…all that is what’s REALLY on my wish list.

But oh, maybe just one wish for me?

- I wish to live an original, creative, awesomely surprising life.

And with that, I say, Happy Birthday To Me.

May all our birthday wishes come true.