The Backstory

It's nearly the HOLIDAYS. All around, full blown holiday season is upon us and I feel like I'm just barely coming down from this summer, for serious - planning and executing a wedding, launching a radio show, and everything that went along with both of those two big life events... Yes, months have passed since both, and in the in between there have been dinner parties and house painting and serious life planning sessions involving future all around. Also, in there and just recently, was meeting my love's extended family, his father, his grandparents on both sides - and a trip to Seattle and Kansas.

Last Thursday we flew south. We overnighted in Seattle at the Inn at the Market - so highly recommended, five stars - it's actually in Pike Place Market. I'd corresponded in advance with the hotel manager for a restaurant recommendation and he was beyond accommodating to my request for a great city evening out, even had their own celebrity chef email with his thoughts on the matter, very impressive. We booked a dinner reservation at the hotel's restaurant, Campagne, tres delicious. We arrived and found that our basic city-side room had been upgraded to a water-view suite that was absolutely gorgeous with a wide view of Puget Sound, the market below, the ferries coming and going. We walked around downtown and ate MANY oysters at The Brooklyn, downed a drink at the brick-lined, tucked away Alibi Room on Post Alley, and then had dinner at Campagne where the chef came out to talk to us for a goodly amount of time, then later we enjoyed his cooking. Fabulous foie gras, lamb and wagyu beef burger.

After we went dancing! First we found a live Brazilian band, shook it there for a little bit, and when all the songs started to sound the same we moved on across the street to a billiards place to play pool. However, once inside, we found that this place had great dancing and we had such a great time there getting down which is made all the more free and enjoyable when in an alien city knowing that you'll mostly likely never see any of these people ever again. Much lip pursing, hands in the air and sweet move busting ensued.

The next morning we flew to St Louis, hopped in our rental SUV and drove to Kansas City where we met Jim's positively kind, welcoming and wonderful family. The three nights there were a whirlwind of grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and kiddos all under the same hotel roof, always someone to talk to, to learn more about, and from which to hear great stories about when "Jimmy" was little. This was a party to celebrate his (maternal) grandfather's 90th birthday. Grandpa and Grandma are incredibly dear, supremely joyous, surprisingly funny ("Well, it's good to be seen, honey... I'm still alive.. get it?"), and endearingly adoptable. They made me feel so welcome. In addition to meeting this side of the fam, I also got to meet his father and paternal grandfather who lives in the same town. Jim's dad is great - so witty and smart and very well-read. Experiencing this whole family tapestry all at once really allowed me to see where he comes from, how he was put together (as it were) and who his people are. I loved the whole experience of getting acquainted with them, and because of this, understanding my husband better.

Family is important - I've heard this my whole life and the older I get the more I understand the how and why and because of this statement. It doesn't and needn't define everything about an individual, but it explains some things about where we each come from - how we came up and why we are, a little or a lot, who we are now. In an age of lonely individualism and when even one generation previous is "history" it's so comforting, really I think, to see people who resemble, have something in common, share traits and are tied through real blood. For me, newly joined to a new person and by extension, a new family, it was as though watching the prequel to a movie I already and devotedly adore, remarking "ahhh," and just, really, finding more things to love about the original.

Sideways

I stared at this photo of a new coffee shop in Manhattan until my mind started to go a little vertigo. Then I couldn't imagine actually eating there, however totally awesome it looks, because my equilibrium was all wonked out which spells doom for my general ability to not barf in most situations. And this, alas, makes me sad because how much would I love to sip an espresso in a sideways library-looking joint? Like, venti much.

Aging, Or Turning 33 and Not Wanting a Car or a Ph.D.

I'm 33 now, as of last Saturday.

Years past, starting in the elementary school days, I used to write up a storm on each October 2, my birthday, and it continued for years. In whatever locked, unlocked, tattered, new, paged or electronic medium I wrote in, I'd determine what I would accomplish in this next year of my life. It ranged from "getting a cat" to "getting a car" and "finding a boyfriend" to "finding a house". These desires all got written down, and they are somewhere still, archived for my own later-in-life indulgence when I'll consider it amusing and sweet to look back at how I resolved to stop nervously throwing up before swim meets or how much I wanted to publish a novel by the time I was 30.

This year I didn't write anything for the first time in years. Being someone who overthinks absolutely everything, I feel two ways about this. Am I finally settled and there's no need to write about what comes next? Or am I too complacent and I'm not taking the time? Either way makes me anxious, and unresolvable as this situation is based on a lack of anything with which to determine everything I hope, I'd better get resolving something in order to remedy this.

The pressure of everything I used to feel seems lesser. I remember being about to graduate from Berkeley and preparing applications to Brown for a Ph.D. in brain science, and also to Columbia for a MFA in creative writing. Clearly I didn't know what I wanted then, but I was really drawn to how people think and also how they create, I wanted to know the "why" and "how" behind everything that drove meaningful human existence. I ended up being a journalist and a writer. In the years since then these occupations have fit me well, I suppose, I'm curious and I like to write, so I get to ask others about how they think and how they create. A mini-academy of the same, perhaps.

I do think that the older I become, the less I care about focusing on myself. I think about spending time contributing to greater goods like family and communities and a marriage, things that involve others in collaboration. So these recent birthdays haven't been spent considering what I want and how to get them. I have what I want - a loving and supportive husband, a lovely home, meaningful work, dear friends and family who infuse my life with gratefulness - so that these yearly landmarks seem less like a pressure to measure accomplishment and become something and more like a time to reflect and realize all the good things that I do have.

Someone, I wish I could remember who because I reference this all the time, told me once that being successful in life is not about how much money you make or how much fame you garner, instead its about how many options you have at any given time. The more you have, the better off you are, and I think that any 30-something birthday is a great time to tally up these rich, rich options.