Falling Short of Fourth: Kristin Bott

When I was in fourth grade, my (fabulous) teacher, Ms. Dearing, had a "Shine On" board, which would highlight a different student every week. Everyone in the class would write a note, scrawling something positive about you and cover it in well-intentioned crayon. You would fill up the board with important pictures and "About Me"-type worksheets.

One of these worksheets asked you to draw a picture of you five, fifteen years from "now." In careful Crayola marker, there's a picture of me in my late 20s, which looks strikingly like the rendering of me when I was 15, which is closely related to "me now" at 10. Except: when I'm older, I am standing next to a marker-man, in front of a misshapen marker-house, and I feature a seriously pronounced butt. (Apparently I knew that girls' butts get bigger as they age. Dear fourth-grade me; they're called hips, please.)

By fourth-grade metrics - I'm quite behind on my timeline. I hit 30 next week - and unlike many of my friends and peers, I lack both house and spouse. (The hip-size predictions, though, are spot-on. We're a sturdy people...)

It has been a bit strange to watch the rest of the pack pull away in various senses, engagements announced and houses purchased, pregnancies heralded on the book of face and pictures of little wrinkly-old-men-looking babies triumphantly shared after the big day.

My peers have partners, kids, careers. I was always one of those kids who kept up with front of the class... and now there are days when I feel impossibly behind. All the loveable ones are married. All the serious ones have houses. All the dedicated ones have children. All the focused ones have Job Plans.

Kristin... you're doing it wrong?

But, wait. In between donning bridesmaids dresses and making plans for sewing baby bibs, I've managed to do some things. One and a half graduate programs and some number of stints as a research scientist (field and lab, both). I've been a science educator, labor organizer, non-profit Jill-of-whatever-you-need. Four states of residence since leaving my native Idaho; in each, I've gone from knowing nothing/no one to having community and some "sense of place."

Yes, there have been some number of honest attempts at long-term committed relationships (my own mother "can't keep track of them anymore"... thanks, Mom), with n-1 that have reached the end of their best-functioning term. And, not uniquely, one of the "ends" includes a messy Saturn's return timeline; just before I turned 28, I moved in with my guy-for-life and was teaching college full-time. Six months later, I had gone through a horrendous break-up/move-out and was concurrently working four part-time jobs - it was awful. By the time I turned 29, I had settled into one full-time job and fallen in with a new, fabulous partner (who is still around and still fabulous).

There are moments of panic, when I realize how behind I am - losing at the spouse game, the property contest, the job of producing and/or raising children, of having a single, focused career.

But there are also moments of satisfaction, sitting in my studio apartment, looking out over my home city and over at the mountains, or brewing beer/cooking dinner/gardening/traveling with my guy - where I can't quite imagine doing this any other way.

Hello, 30. You're huge, you're looming, you are impending doom and horrible bouts of navel-gazing. You are a reminder of all of the things I Am Not Doing That I Should Be Doing.

But... you also look suspiciously like other things I've seen before. Like other gigantic impossibilities, summiting Mt. Hood or running a half-marathon, job searching in a horrible economy or completing a difficult graduate program, that were overcome with a simple, calm, one-foot-in-front-of-the-other-with-a-sense-of-purpose approach.

Maybe you're actually just another year, and your significance is an artifact of our base-10 number system. I'm with Pamela on this one - there's a lot ahead, and you're just the start.

Dear 30, you don't get to make me feel behind. Dear 30, I'm doing everything exactly as I should be, including all of the rough spots and bad episodes. Dear 30, I still don't know what I'm going to be when I grow up or whether or not a house, kids, dog, spouse is/are in the plan. But, dearest 30, that's how this is going to work.

And - dear fourth-grade me, I'm sorry to let you down. But, with all due respect, ten-year-olds have a somewhat poor track record of accurately predicting the future.

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Kristin grew up in southern Idaho, a land filled with sagebrush and Republicans. She's lived, worked, and studied in western Montana, southern Arizona, and mid-Michigan, where she met Pamela Roy. When not busily failing to produce children, land a spouse, or purchase real estate, Kristin rides her bike early and often, brews beer, reads books, cooks good food, and maintains a decent garden. She works at a non-profit in Portland, where she lives with three houseplants, four bikes, and multiple rain jackets; you can find her tales of bikes, beer, and breakfast at: http://bikingpotato.blogspot.com/.

My Thirtieth Year to Heaven

by Emily McNair

“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.”

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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.