Thirty years ago this day, in the town of Wells, in the state of Minnesota, a child was born. The firstborn to his parents, indeed the first of his generation, his nativity was welcomed with great joy, and he was given a name not like unto other names, to set him apart from the crowd all the days of his life.
I am thirty now. For some reason I am really feeling the milestoniness of this birthday; not just because I am no longer to be trusted, but because I think I am actually growing up. Oh, I have been growing up in a haphazard fashion for years now, fits and spurts of narrow maturity sprouting up in the face of life events. But this feels different; this feels like I am actually working at growing up, choosing to become a person of conscious responsibility. That’s new ground for me, so it is taking some getting used to.
And if I look at it from a different angle — if I think of all the individual years that I have lived, feeling my way back along the thread of my life in my mind’s eye — then I really start to feel woogly. There is a fair amount of water under the bridge already, so to speak. But still miles to go before we sleep…
