Happy Birthday to me! And Happy Anniversary to us!
Last week, I crossed the half century mark. This feels much more momentous than turning 40. I thought I wrote a bucket list on this blog about turning 40, but I can't find it just now - I didn't label it birthdays and I didn't write it in April, May or June 2013, around the time I would have turned 40. So I don't know if I did those things I thought I might do - I didn't run another marathon or do more writing. However, looking for it reminded me of those blessed years in Guam. What an experience! I know I complained about the hardships, but I am so, so thankful we said yes to those orders despite the fear.
(Thought: Would I feel the same way if I said yes to the job offer? Saying yes is usually more rewarding than saying no - I have never been good at saying no, and I usually look a little askance at articles that encourage nay saying.)
Side note: Those posts also reminded me to share the request for prayers for the island of Guam after it was walloped by a typhoon earlier this week. Thanks be, there were no deaths, but the destruction was overwhelming. It will take years to recover.
And yet, no doubt Guam will recover. It is truly a testimony to the human spirit that so human beings have lived for so long on islands where natural disasters occur at regular intervals. ***
To celebrate our midcentury birthdays, a couple friends and I met up in Nashville this past weekend. We picked Nashville as a central location and because it has a reputation for being a fun place to visit - we had a great visit with each other, but downtown Nashville caters to drunken bridal parties, drunken birthday parties, and drunken partiers. No wonder my young adult children teased me for going to Nashville for a "Girls' weekend." Opportunities for drinking abound, but we are not those kind of girls. We had to hunt to find places for a quiet dinner with delicious food near our hotel where we didn't have to shout at each other. Our days were more pleasant: we visited book stores, strolled through Centennial park and the Parthenon and the campus of Vanderbilt, went for a long hike on the outskirts of town, and visited the convent where my cousin the Nashville Dominican lives. Not your traditional girls' weekend itinerary. We did, admittedly, visit a winery on the grounds of what was a plantation - we strolled the grounds and tasted wine and spent about 3 hours over lunch. It was a beautiful day.
Had we done any research, we probably would have realized we weren't Nashville's typical tourists, but we all were busy, and it's hard to get a feel for a place without actually being there.
This is the first time I've done anything like this with friends. Something new every decade! I can't come up with a bucket list right now, but I hope it includes more time with adult children, family, and with friends and finding a place to finally settle down where those adult kids and friends and family want to come to visit.
To celebrate our anniversary, we are talking about going out to eat and then dancing at the Broken Spoke, the two stepping place that is family friendly. But we also had the neighbors over last night to celebrate our neighbor's bday - also 50 - and we visited a lot later than I expected, so we'll see if we have the energy when 7 pm rolls around. We haven't done much entertaining this spring, so socializing has been a treat. I feel like I've read a few articles and/or book reviews lately about entertaining. It certainly was a lot easier in our old neighborhood where we could walk a block or two to a friends' house to visit, and we belonged to groups that socialized - work, book club, parish groups, etc. It's harder in the suburbs both to join those kinds of groups and to socialize. There has been one work event in two years - a reception for an artist doing a project on campus - although we talked about hosting a Christmas party, but never pulled it off. I think people would be relish the opportunity to connect outside of work, at least based on what these recent columns have written.
I feel I should set some goals or review some memories to mark these events - twenty-seven years of marriage is not a milestone, but it is something to celebrate. Marriage in some ways has gotten easier over the years - we know each other pretty well, we share a lot of wonderful memories, we trust each other even more implicitly than we did before. But there are still challenges we are learning to navigate in this season of life - those challenges are still often about parenting and our relationships with adult children. We struggle to find time to have meaningful conversations, not just listing to-do items or recounting the day's agenda, and sometimes those conversations are difficult when they are about the future. We still grate on each other over issues we've rarely agreed about - frequently money: how much money to spend and how much to save. But at least we know I'll be the frugal voice and he'll be the enjoy life voice. And often we meet in the middle. I know my indecisiveness and anxiety can drive him crazy, and our sleep habits still don't often align - I'm still a night owl while he still gets up early. So we both could use more sleep.
But we both also appreciate each other more. We both are thankful for this life we've built, even if it looks nothing like we imagined, as the cliches suggest. Being comfortable with each other is a great gift that I didn't realize I would value so much. And I imagine that comfort with each other will continuue to ripen into a richer relationship as the years roll on.
And that also goes for these relationships with my college friends. We picked up right where we were last - a short visit a couple years ago when we first decided we needed more time, a whole weekend, to spend together revisiting the happy days of the past, sharing current struggles, being grateful for our friendships and marriages and children, and looking forward to what's to come and how to make the most of life.
This is all very sentimental - birthdays and anniversaries can bring that on. So here's to many more!
