To celebrate, we went to the restaurant where we met, which has unfortunately turned into a terribly reviewed cheap pizza joint, so we just snapped a quick picture and walked to a nearby sushi place instead for our actual dinner.
It’s funny looking back on that night in 2015. How I had had dinner with a friend I am sadly no longer in contact with after we lost touch when she moved to the east coast, but back then, she was one of my closest friends. I was tired and fed up with what I had recently experienced from online dating - the cool, sexy movie nerd guy who blew up at me when I called him out for not texting me back for several days (now, looking back, realizing he probably had an issue with alcohol and definitely anger issues), the weird probably rapist guy who ghosted me, and all the other multitudinous rejections and misfires. I wasn’t excited about meeting this new guy - I liked his enthusiasm but was put off by his bad spelling and grammar. Still, I walked across the street to meet him, and immediately liked his kind, engaged vibe, his intensity, his stories of his difficult past. I felt like he would “get” me. And he did, in more ways than one.
Ten years is a LONG time. The difference between 43 and 53 is immense, but, as I had hoped, at 53 I still feel “like myself”. I still feel joy and contentment and normalcy, even with everything going on in this country. Having long felt that my mother lost her mind at this age and never really recovered - it was around now she started having that “mysterious ailment” that went on to kill her 25 years later - I was always worried about hitting this age. But, so far, so good. My periods are regular but erratic (always early or late but always show up), so I’m far from actual menopause, and who knows what I’ll be like when that starts happening, but as of this moment I still feel normal and competent. I hate that staying at a healthy weight is almost impossible now (it was effortless at 43), I hate that my arthritic toe makes my life difficult and painful every single day, I hate that I’m now blind as a bat. But I feel mentally sharp and physically capable, and am very much enjoying this phase of life with two mid-aged kids who are largely independent and easy to be around. We talked a bit last night about how hard it was being a mother of two young boys - it was really, really brutal at times - and how I often contemplated therapy or anti-depressants when in fact it was mostly the relentlessness of raising toddlers and preschoolers that was getting to me. Suddenly that weight lifted when Theo started school. I think my mother dying right around that time was also a big shift for the better, honestly. Everything has looked up since then.
And the four of us have so far survived a pandemic and two god-awful Drumf regimes (so far, anyway), and somehow I’m still in this house (paid off!) and still running my event (27 years!) and my relationship still stands despite the expected petty grievances and complaints (when my sister was visiting last week, I took out two large empty juice containers from the refrigerator left there by the H and said, “exhibit A”).
I worry for the future, for sure - I worry about the environment, I worry about how the hell we’re going to pay for college, where these kids will be able to get jobs and afford to live, will they end up in their childhood bedroom well into their 30s and 40s, with no relationships and no jobs, depressed and smoking weed like so many young men today? Is that the future we’re preparing them for? Unlike the future I faced in the early 90s, which seemed bleak with talk of recession and the coming computerization of everything, but still, a young girl with no college degree like me could still land a decent office job, get an apartment, and a few years later even manage to buy a house. Will these kids have those opportunities (or luck)? I worry about this all the time. Thankfully at least they have a loving launchpad in us and this house, and they’re both smart, capable kids (and Theo has exceptional interpersonal skills, which will get him far).
For me, right now everything is just fine - event is still going well (on par with last year, still), feel healthy, kids enjoying their summer. I can’t believe how quickly school is starting up again. No matter what it’s going to be a tight year financially due to the extra day of the event and having robbed from this year to pay off the house last October, but I have zero problem with spending our vacations in the desert (except next summer, of course) or camping.
Here’s to another ten years. Things are going to look wildly different by then!
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