On my 31st birthday, I was very sad. The night before my birthday, I asked myself questions and every answer to the questions made me sad. When I was a girl, my dream was to get married at twenty-five and give birth at twenty-six, twenty-eight and thirty. I told myself, “After childbirth, I will dedicate the rest of my life to building a family and also taking good care of myself so that even in my sixties, I would still look like a young girl.” 

I was thirty-one and didn’t even have a boyfriend. A night before my birthday, I went inside my room, locked myself and said to myself, “I’m going to sleep all day tomorrow and pretend it’s not my birthday. After all, what’s there to celebrate? 

A call woke me up at 5am. It was my mother. She was in the USA then but wanted to be the first person to call me. She sang for me. She told me stories of all the birthdays she had organized for me. My 11th birthday seems to be her favourite because my dad was alive then and it was the last birthday they both celebrated for me. 

She told me, “That day your dad bought you a teddy bear. I made the cake. The area kids came around and it was a huge celebration. Three days later your dad had an accident and died.” She was happy until she got to that point. She stopped the stories and asked me, “What are you doing today?” I answered, “Nothing. I will be in bed all day. I want something very quiet. A reflective kind of birthday.” She shouted on the phone, “Adwoa, a reflective diɛn? You better get out there and celebrate something with your friends. Thirty-one won’t come again and one day you’ll miss it. Don’t sit there and think. Celebrate it and make merry.” 

When we hang up the call, I continued sleeping until my phone started beeping. Messages started coming from Whatsapp, Facebook, SMS and all the areas you can think of. I saw the notifications but didn’t bother to open any of the messages. At 10am, Nancy called. “You haven’t been online all day. I sent you a message on Whatsapp. Happy birthday but look at the message quickly and get back to me.” I checked the message and it said, “Girl, we have to chill today. I have some money. Where would you like to go? Just say it and get ready. I’ll come for you very soon.” 

At 2pm Nancy was at my door knocking as if she was going to break down the door in the next minute. She came with Alberta. On the way going, we picked up Lucy. The squad was complete. We went to the pool, bought drinks and food and started doing the little we could do to make the day a happy one. If you have friends like these people, you can’t hide in the closet on your birthday. They will drag you on the floor to a place of fun if they have to. They did well but the cloud on my heart faded. The door opened and a ray of light entered. I forgot about my love issues and instead concentrated on the happy moment.

We were at the pool doing our best to have fun. Lucy will take a photo of me and I’ll take a photo of them. It got to a point the four of us wanted to be in one photo but didn’t know how that was possible. Nancy called a guy sitting by the pool and the guy came. She said, “Please, can you take a photo of us?” You can see the guy was surprised but he forced a smile and stretched his arm for the phone. Lucy screamed from behind us, “He has an iPhone. Let him use his phone. We’ll get better photos.” I answered, “How can you even suggest that? Don’t you trust my phone again? It’s better than iPhone. Allow.” The guy took my phone but put it on the table and started shooting us with his phone. 

You can trust us when it comes to poses. We can pose our souls out immediately you point the camera at us. The guy was patient. He laughed with us. He even told us what to do at some point. We dragged him into the celebration and all of a sudden, he was one of us. We’ll rush to him and look at how the photos looked. He’ll give his phone to us and we’ll scroll through. I didn’t know the girls have ordered a birthday cake for me. Out of nowhere, one of the waitresses at the place came with a cake and they all started singing a happy birthday song. The guy got up and recorded everything. When we cut the cake, he was the first to take a bite. He wished me a happy birthday and I thanked him for doing a good job for us. 

A few minutes after the cake, he told us he had to leave. I screamed, “Please send us our photos. We got him surrounded. He asked, “Airdrop?” None of us uses an iPhone so we didn’t even know what that meant. He told us, “Then I have to send through Whatsapp. Lucy gave him her number and he took my number too. None of us took his number so when he left and the photos weren’t coming we all got worried. I told them, “You said you want iPhone photos. Now see our end. Where are the photos?” Nancy was sure the guy was going to send them. I was sure that was the end of our photos. It was around 10pm when my phone beeped. I opened my Whatsapp and the photos kept dropping one after the other. Nancy was with me. I screamed, “He’s sending them.” She came to watch as every photo kept dropping one after the other followed by the videos. 

The guy texted, “Sorry I sent them late. I was waiting to get home so I could use WiFi to send them.” I responded, “No problem. Thanks so much for doing this for us. May God bless you. Because of you, we have iPhone photos.” He sent laughing emojis. He sent, “Happy birthday once again. I hope you had fun?” I responded with thank you and the conversation ended. 

I saved his number. I don’t know what for but maybe to say a proper thank you to him at some point. The pictures were good. You could see some were even edited. When I started posting the photos on my status, I gave photo credit to him but I didn’t know his name so I said, “The guy with the iPhone.” 

He watched my status. He laughed at that. He sent me a message on one of the statuses; “My name is Gerard.” So the subsequent photos, I wrote his name under them. “Shot by Gerard.” 

That’s how I and Gerard became friends. We texted often. He asked how was life after the birthday. I told him life was good. One day the conversation couldn’t stop. We were on the phone all night. I realized I love his conversation because every line he said was funny. I found myself asking his age and he told me age was just a number. I said, “Gerard I’m serious, how old are you?” I wanted to know his age so I would know where to place him. He said thirty. I said, “Call me big sister because you’re not my mate.” He asked my age and I said thirty-one. He screamed “Ahhh! Just one year? I answered, “That’s one more Christmas than you. You can’t call it just.” 

One day we met on a date and he told me he couldn’t take his eyes off me the day he was editing the photos. “I don’t know but there was something about you that got my attention instantly and it kept my attention on you each time I went through the photos.” I said in my head, “Gerard, go straight to the point. Just hit the nail on the head.” What came out of my mouth was, “What was that?” He answered, “I don’t know but I know it’s a good thing and it’s the reason we are here today. I like you.” 

“Gerard, is that a proposal?”

“Yes, that’s what it meant to be.”

“Gerard, you’re proposing to your big sister?” 

“Hahaha, where’s the big? Please don’t make me laugh.”

“Gerard, you want your big sister to fall in love with you? You’re not scared?”

I asked him to give me some time to think about it. When I got home I called to ask him, “Are you not worried that I’m older than you? Be truthful with your answer. ” He responded, “If you didn’t mention age, I wouldn’t have cared to even know about it. It doesn’t mean anything. What matters is what’s inside of our hearts.”

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I asked him to give me some time to think about it so I could consult the sisters. They were there that day and I wanted to sample their opinions but after that conversation with him, I said yes to him. He was surprised by the sudden u-turn but I told him something about him that gave me the impression that everything would be well. We dated for a month before I told the girls. They were like, “How’s that possible? How did it start? It was meant to be about photos so how did we get here?” I explained to them. They thought I was rushing. I told them I thought the same too. They asked me to be careful because the love that springs out of nowhere ends in nowhere. 

After six months of dating, Gerard asked me, “Would it be too early if we talked about marriage?” 

I was thirty-one years. My longest relationship lasted for six years. The next one after that lasted for two years. The one before Gerard also lasted for two years. All of those years went wasted and they were the reason I got scared on my 31st birthday. “Six years didn’t end in marriage but six months is looking like marriage? I thought I was dreaming or Gerrard was joking. I asked him, “Are you ready?” He answered, “I was ready even before I found you. I made a promise to myself that the next woman who makes me fall in love deeply as you’ve done will be my wife because love doesn’t happen to me this easily.”

When I called my mom and told her I was getting married, she didn’t believe me. She took Gerard’s number from me and spoke with him before she believed it. She hadn’t been home in six years but after talking to Gerard, she said, “Finally, a reason to come home.” 

Three months later, we had a beautiful wedding that made my mom cry. She told me, “Your father should have been here to witness what sprouted from the seed he planted 31 years ago. I miss him. I really do.” It was tears of joy and sadness but in the end, I walked out of the church with my arm carefully placed in Gerard’s. I couldn’t believe that a few months ago, I was sad because I felt my dreams have deserted me. Just when I was about to give up on myself, my dream came out of nowhere and made everything beautiful. It came late, six years late I think, but a late dream is still a dream. The happiness is greater and you end up treasuring what you have because you know how long you have to wait to get it. 

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A year after marriage, my mom pulled the strings so we could travel out of Ghana to be with her. Life isn’t a bed of roses but when you find the right person, the thorns of the roses don’t matter any more. It will cut you and you’ll bleed but you know who’ll be next to you holding a balm. That alone makes the journey worth the squeeze and it’s the reason me and my Gerard keep growing strong each day. It may tarry but when it finally happens, he makes all things beautiful. 

Adwoa Ansong