Thirty years and counting

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…

Leave a Reply