Dirty Thirty

I'm turning 30 this year on Thanksgiving Day. I could lie to you and say that's made me introspective and nostalgic but mostly it's kind of an "eh" feeling. I don't FEEL 30 mentally, so why should it bother me that my body is turning 30 physically?

Sure, there are things I wish I'd done, places I wish I'd gone, things I wish I'd said...and the reverse: not done, not gone, not said. But I can't change that now so why dwell on it? Like Pumba says: You've gotta put the past in your behind.

I sincerely hope the worst year of my life is behind me and only the best are before me. 2009 was awful and I couldn't wait for that year to end. There were 2 good things to come out of it: my niece and my soulmate. And my soulmate and I didn't reconnect because of anything happy, it was over shared grief.

My dad died on May 21, 2009 and it will, hopefully, be the worst day in my life. I remember so clearly what I was doing when I got the call and the disbelief that flooded through me. I hoped with every fiber of my being that this was some cruel sick joke even as I knew that it wasn't. A week at home going through his things and crying with my family eased the pain some but it was still there June 6 when I got word that a childhood friend had died.

The sweet, goofy tow-headed, doe-eyed boy I remembered hadn't been a friend since about 2nd grade but we talked occasionally in high school when passing in the halls and we always had a weird connection not many had: we were born on the same day. I've written about Noah before, so I won't go into the brief history we shared, but his death so quickly after Dad's brought my soulmate and I together again and we've been close ever since.

So my birthday is looming and I don't regret turning 30, I'm not afraid of it and I will actually be 30, not "29 and some months" as Dad used to say. I DO regret that Noah won't be there with me and that Dad won't have to up his age to "49 and some months" to keep up with his aging children. (He was 39 and some months when he died).

I have a cousin who's a birthday twin, born a few years before me, and another cousin who's expecting a baby due on November 28...but it's not quite the same. Going to school with Noah and having that be our special bond at a time in our lives when something in common was of the utmost importance to show how cool we were...that's something that will never be replaced.

So to Noah and my cousin in Georgia, happy birthday! And to the baby...come on, join us, it's a pretty exclusive little club full of awesome people.