“It was my thirtieth year to heaven...” I’ve, for as long as I can remember, loved the words of Dylan Thomas. From my dad’s annual Christmas Eve reading of A Child’s Christmas in Wales, to high school poetry recitations, to today, when I thought about what I would write for this blog, when the first thing that came to mind was this line from “Poem in October.” I’m shamed to say that my (purloined from my father so many years ago) copy of his collected poems was more than a little dusty but the words came back to my mind as I read. I once knew this poem by heart, learned it for a competition, but I can admit in my thirtieth year that it was a show-offy endeavor -- long, complicated rhythms, tongue-tangling word combinations -- and it never honestly occurred to me that I would arrive at this year in my life. That I’d rise one day “in the rainy [spring]/ And walk abroad in a shower of all my days,” reflecting on, reliving the milestones, the landmarks, times when I “... whispered the truth of [my] joy.”
My life is so far from where I imagined it would be. Granted, my first childhood aspiration was to be a hot air balloon. Not possible? A whale then. What? No? Alright, a pig farmer. I’m happy to say that last one didn’t pan out -- I thought the pigs would be raised more for companionship (a la Charlotte’s Web) than consumption. But nevermind that. Then for the second half of my life so far, I imagined I’d be living abroad, most likely in Nepal, studying, working, doing something. But somehow I’m here in Philadelphia. More rooted everyday, some days happy about this, some days horrified, many days just ambivalent. Is rooted trapped? Is this thirtieth year the last I have to break free? Do I want to?
For me, the only real hang-up, the only loss I feel about turning 30 this coming April is the expiration of my first adult (10 year) passport. The first two I was glad to shed -- a portrait of a child, a cringingly awful and awkward moment of 16. But this passport is the story of my young adult life, my proudest moments, my most fearful, my most adventurous, my most selfless, my most selfish, my loneliest and my most gorgeously solitary. For most of my late teens and early twenties, my life was my travels, mostly alone and spanning 6 continents by my 23rd birthday. My passport -- beat up, stained, sticky here and there with immigration control sticker residue -- reflects those years in so many ways; it’s the old style, with an indentation from the photo. Laminated! The extra pages stapled in oh-so-officially, out of sequence and slightly smaller. The unassuming quarter-page stamps. The full page sticker visas. The extensions. The re-entry permits. The exit stamps. Perpetual motion, never more than stopping by, passing through.
Ten years ago I never would have imagined this life I’ve created now, its chilling and deeply comforting feeling of permanence. I’ve always enjoyed making decisions, big decisions, life-changing decisions. But I realize now that -- while clearly many of these decisions have shaped my life and who I am -- none of them were as final, as permanent as they seemed at the time, and this decision-making proclivity of mine has set me on a definite, increasingly ineluctable course. Good or bad -- it just is.
I bought the house that is sometimes my joyful home and sometimes the stone around my neck. I adopted the dog I can’t remember now not having. I accepted the job that challenges, satisfies and sometimes frustrates the shit out of me. I said yes to the proposal and will soon be marrying the only person I’ve ever actually enjoyed the feeling of depending on. The person who has -- by loving me truly and wholly -- redefined my whole conception of self. Of what I want my life to be, of the genuine okay-ness of the fact that my life will, in fact, keep going forward and never be the same as it was, moment to moment, day to day, year to year.
“It was my thirtieth/ Year to heaven stood there then in the summer noon/ Though the town below lay leaved with October blood./ O may my heart’s truth/Still be sung/ On this high hill in a year’s turning.”
---Emily McNair is a fellow graduate of Bard College. She works for a nonprofit that provides community-based services to people with psychiatric and/or addictive disorders, developmental disabilities, and those who are homeless, in the greater Philadelphia area.
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