Now that Big Guy and Little Guy are back in school, I can tackle those projects I’ve been neglecting. One being getting over to the DMV to renew my driver’s license.

Yes, it is official. I’m less than 60 days out from hitting the big 40. And in case I was trying to forget, it was so kind of DMV to remind me with its little renewal postcard.

Don’t misunderstand. I really believe the “it’s only a number” line. I don’t believe my life is over. I don’t believe I am old and I don’t believe the best is behind me.

I also don’t believe I will ever be able to recapture the lineless, smooth skin that once graced my face no matter how many products I buy or wear certain, trendy jeans or tops that are being marketed to me but at the same time would only work if certain areas were lifted, enlarged and shrunk and flattened. I am what I am.

But there is a difference between accepting and welcoming. And while I accept an additional year that launches me further along, welcoming it will be a more gradual process.

Being slow to roll out the welcome mat hasn’t prevented me from beginning to appreciate all that forty encompasses. For this fast approaching milestone has inspired me to take an informal inventory of my life. And what I have learned is that forty is not to be feared.

Forty is the amount of time it has taken me to get my stuff together. It brings patience, along with a bit of wisdom that I didn’t have and was unwilling to acknowledge in others a few years ago. For many of us, it takes forty years to get to a point where we understand how things operate in our own little world, flaws and all.

It takes forty years to figure out how to have and hold on to true friends. To surround ourselves with people we want to share our life with, while not feeling badly about letting the others go. Forty is being old enough to know what we want and being confident in our own skin. We know what makes us happy. We know when to say no.

Forty is having the ability to reinvent ourselves. Reconnect and rekindle relationships. It’s reprioritizing as we watch our parents age and our children grow. Being selfless without hesitation.

Forty is scanning the display of People and Us at the grocery store, and not only not recognizing many of the stars on the cover, but more importantly, not caring. It’s catching an episode of Little House on the Prairie on the big screen TV one Sunday afternoon at the gym and thinking that although as a child, I found Michael Landon’s Charles Ingalls to be creepy, now, as a mother, I find him to be strangely hot. (But the Brady Bunch Dad is so not hot).

Despite what the tag line says, forty is not the new thirty. If we prefer to live in the land of make believe, we can kid ourselves and buy into this. But with forty comes our ability to handle reality. It takes only a quick good look at our young thirty something friends to realize that forty is forty, plain and simple.

And forty is being perfectly fine with this realization. It’s picking the day to make the drive over to get that new license and planning on smiling in the picture. It’s not wishing away for the old days. Instead, it’s glancing back, valuing what we have accomplished and what we have, while looking ahead, knowing that we are comfortable with ourselves, exactly where we are.

Illyse appears Thursdays on TriangleMom2Mom.