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[Note: My blog posts aren’t normally this complainy. I blame the gray sky and rain we’ve been having here in Oregon for the last few weeks. Also, the German title means "Today is my birthday!" I felt that somehow it was less self-centered to say it in a language besides English. Also, cooler.]
Today is my birthday. I’m now 26 years old. And can I tell you guys something? I feel ancient.
It’s not just that my back aches when I wake up, or that I have to put on my glasses when I want to read street signs. It’s not even that I become crabby and incoherent if I stay up past my 10:30 bedtime. No, what really makes me feel ancient is realizing that I know a bunch of people who are graduating from high school or college – and I can remember them when they were babies. It’s discovering that my ten-year high school reunion is in two years. It’s realizing that I graduated college five years ago, and have made no substantial headway on any career since then.
Go ahead and laugh at me. Goodness knows I laugh at myself when I realize I’m complaining about my age in front of my grandma, who is just as active as I am. Josh doesn’t take my complaints seriously either, that rascal. Just the other day I was wailing to him about how 26 sounds so much older than 25, and how I haven’t accomplished anything with my life yet, and he said, “You’ve accomplished plenty!”
“What have I done that’s so great?” I asked.
“Well, you married me.”
“True.”
“And you’re really hot.”
“I don’t think I had anything to do with that.”
“And you make good food.”
“Anyone can do that.”
“And you’re really good at reading books.”
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I don’t think Josh is really the best person to console me. He’s made his peace with signs of aging already, since he started going bald a few years ago. (In fact, if he didn’t shave his head regularly, he’d have a horrible fringe hairstyle, which I would do my best to shave off while he was sleeping.) Plus, he always tells me that men get more attractive when they age. Plus, he has a ridiculously awesome career, so he’s accomplished that if nothing else.
I just want to feel like I’ve done something lasting with my life, or at least something memorable and spectacular. And despite what my father-in-law says, I know that there are ways for women to do lasting things other than raising children. I want to write a great novel, or live on every continent, or be that crazy relative who’s always doing things that everyone else is afraid to do, like skydiving or climbing Everest. I’m tired of just sitting in my apartment doing little things that are enjoyable, but ultimately not memorable. I want to make my second quarter-century the better of the two.
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