30

I was at a staff luncheon a few months ago, meeting my new colleagues, when one of my younger colleagues asked me, "Summer, how old are you?" I tried to make a joke by saying something dumb (but in my mind, oh so witty) that when I was a senior in high school it was COOL to wear a t-shirt that had Bart Simpson declaring "Have a cow, man!" This was funny until I realized with HORROR that she and a few others were trying to DO THE MATH and figure it out. So I told them. "35. I am 35." My young, twenty-something fresh faced colleague said with all the warmth and kindness in the world, "Oh, I would have never thought you were THAT old. I thought you were like, 27."

This of course was a compliment. I have made such "compliments" to people who were older than me, and it reminded me with hilarity of an Onion article I saw a few years ago, with the headline "Woman looks Great for a Thirty-Two Year Old." This is the world you sometimes live in when you are in your thirties and mingling with people in their twenties. The thing that I like about these exchanges is that I know my colleague doesn't think it will EVER happen to them--being older than they are in a cultural sense, in a realer sense. I certainly didn't and every time I've gotten panicked about the reality of aging (i.e no longer "cool" or "relevant") I think of what a wise woman once said to me about getting older, "It beats the alternative." (the alternative being dead and forever young)

Tonight I am going out to celebrate my friend Adrienne's 30th birthday. I've known Adrienne's 30th birthday was coming because well, she started telling me about it about 6 months ago, with her dark brown eyes growing ever larger, as if to signify, THIS IS IT. I didn't help toning down the significance. Instead, I'd get excited and ask her with eyes equally wide, "SO WHAT ARE YOU GONNA DO?"

All you folks older than me will laugh at the weight I am implying to the 30th birthday, but I think it is a significant one. Not everyone I know was terrified of turning 30, but I was. It was like graduating from college all over again and being faced with "Well, there goes my life plan, NOW WHAT?" Granted, literally EVERYTHING in my life went KAPUT when I turned 30, but it was a necessary death. I have come to believe that heading into your 30's is the REAL graduation into adulthood. It's a time when you get a taste of time really passing, and in that taste, you realize you are still hungry and so you start actually figuring out WHAT you are hungry for and HOW are you going to get it.

My friend Judy told me years and years ago, "The great thing about being an adult is that if you want to have a hot fudge sundae for breakfast you can." She was 21 when she said this, and I've thought about this many times because what she really was saying is that when you graduate to adulthood you are your own boss. Nothing can be truer than in your 30's--when you ave some experience under your belt to know what works and what DOESN'T work. My friend Julie says it gets even better when you are in your 40's and 50's, because, you stop giving a rat's ass about a lot of stuff. As she says, "They don't call them the 'Fuck You Fifties' for nothing."

This is what I shared with Adrienne when I talked about turning 30. I think when you turn 30 you are on the brink of the greatest gift aging can ever give you--the sense that time is passing with or without us and we have a choice to run with it or let it pass by. It's a call to arms.

So welcome to the fold, Ms. Adrienne. Happy Birthday! We are so glad to have you.