33...the year of happiness

Birthdays
They used to be such an event when we were kids. Balloons, friends, games and food. A celebration!

When did they stop mattering? 18? Now I could fight in a war. Perhaps after I turned 21? Now I could drink beer. (Isn't that a bit backassward?) 25? This felt like a transition into adulthood. We were finally out of college and trudging through the workplace. 30? This felt like the entrance into parenthood. After all, society seems to dedicate the 30's to raising your babies and adolescents. It seems like the 40's will be when we are forced to live through all of the teenage angst again through our children. Gee, won't that be a blast!

So here I am at 33. But I am not really feeling anything. It's just another age. I feel fully entrenched on the parenthood path. I have two wonderful boys. One five years old and getting ready for kindergarten. How can he be such a big boy already! One 16 months old and a bundle of energy. He is going to be a blast to grow up with. I have one husband who works a lot and is exhausted but still the best partner ever. We have a house that is truly a home. We are truly a family.

I look at a snapshot from our first summer together. 1990. Yep, we were 16! We were babies. There was such joy and innocence. The joy is still here but it is tempered by a loss of innocence. What strikes me is that we met when we were 16. We have now been together for 17 years. We have been together longer than I existed without him. He is truly my right arm and we are in this together!

I look at our wedding picture. I can't help but smile. We got married in Vegas. We tried the whole hometown church wedding but that just wasn't us. We could care less what flowers graced the aisle and felt it wasteful to expect our family and friends to spend $100 on a dress/tux that they would never use again. After about a month of planning we said forget it. We'd been together for 8 years already. The wedding guests knew each other. We are not formal people. Why spend the money on a formal affair. Let's just have fun and mark the beginning of our "formal" life together. Our religious belief is that God would show up no matter where we planned the celebration. So we picked a chapel in Vegas and we picked a date. We invited all our family to join us for a vacation. 40 people came. 38 from hubbies side and 2 from mine. (But don't get me started on how that felt.)

Now before you think how crazy it is to honeymoon with 40 relatives, you can relax. We spent the money we would would have spent on a wedding and treated ourselves to the honeymoon of a lifetime! We left the day after the wedding and went on to Kauai. We had an amazing time! We left our family partying in Vegas with Elvis and we spent the next week on a sandy beach sipping mango margaritas!

So anyway, back to my birthday reflections. I look at these pictures and I see such youthful innocence. I really want some of that back. I am so cynical these days. I don't like who I have become in those respects. There are days that I feel like I'd like to move my family to a cave in Antarctica. I wouldn't have to deal with the politics there, right?

Speaking of reflections, the face looking back at me in the mirror can't possibly be mine. First off, it is too round. I would never let my face get that round. Secondly, didn't I have brown hair? What are all those gray things doing there! I am only 33! 33 year olds shouldn't have to color their hair! It should still be an option, right? (BIG sigh)

Well, I look at my first 32 years and I reflect that I have come a long way. My childhood aspiration was to find a loving man and surround myself with family. I always longed for the love and feeling that comes with a tight knit family. I have succeeded. I always pushed myself academically to prove that I was as smart as everyone else. I assumed that that meant I had to have a glamorous career. I now have a masters degree that I don't use. But I do use that brain to figure out how to reach my autistic child--and we would all agree that a degree does not assure that that will happen! He is doing well (although I credit his hard work more than mine). But the point being that I am intellectually challenged and better rewarded here at home than I would ever be at any position in Corporate America! My 16 year old self would have never imagined that my 33 year old self would be a stay at home mom. My 16 year old self would have probably thought I had sold out on our dream. She would be wrong. I am living our dream.

I look at that overweight, graying lady in the mirror and I am still proud of her. She has found a beautiful life and she is happy (when she lets herself realize it). She really needs to slow down a little bit and enjoy the moments more. Perhaps when she does that she will find time to take better care of herself (and her face will become less round and she'll have time to color the grey out of her hair).

Either way, it has been an interesting journey. Life has provided some interesting obstacles and some amazing sights along the way. Am I where I expected to be at this point in my life? Yes! I am happy and that is all I expected. However, I am going to devote this next year to showing it more often!