31

So 30 was a good year, what with getting pregnant and giving birth and going back to Dublin and churning out two and a half chapters of a dissertation and all.  What might 31 have in store? A growing baby? A finished dissertation? Perhaps a job? More sleep?

Every now and then you happen upon people who say their high school years, or their college years, or their twenties (and so on) were the best years of their lives.  Not that I didn’t have a fine time in high shool, I just don’t really understand looking backward for the best years of one’s life.  In my experience, it’s a pretty good sign that you’re doing something wrong if that’s the case.  I’ve certainly had moments of longing for the responsibility-free days of my youth: being able to smoke without a second thought as to my health; staying up till the wee and not-so-wee hours of the night and morning knowing that I could sleep the next day away; taking off on a whim through southwestern Kentucky, trying to get lost out by the lakes without a second thought as to the gas I was burning up or the papers I was putting off writing; racking up a credit card balance on clothes that wouldn’t last more than a year… But in the midst of those highlights of a dissipated existence: crippling self-doubt; too much boy drama; too much friend drama; a job that was way, way too stressful for what it was; the nagging claustrophobia that only a very small town can cause.

Now, I have a husband who’s way more fun than I thought a husband could ever be; a baby who’s just about as good as they come, and so beautiful I can’t see straight (or is that the lack of sleep?); a house that’s perpetually falling apart, but is still exactly the kind of house I always wanted to live in, in a neighborhood where neighbors actually stop by and chat and offer to babysit; a career plan that’s on the verge of budding into reality, and is exactly what I wanted for my professional life; and a body that’s capable of running and biking and spending a day birthing a baby.

And on top of it all? Knowing that even better days are ahead. Viva la thirties!