29

Hey, last post was my 100th! Awesome.

Yesterday the Dude and I celebrated his birthday a few days early. He's been working so much, that we figured a Sunday was the only day safe to make firm reservations. I like his birthdays. They're always so relaxed. He's not big on parties for himself.

So we slept in and he opened his presents. I gave him some Adobe Photoshop manuals he wanted, which made him happy. We lazed around all day, then went out to dinner at the Keg Mansion. It serves his favourite steak, so it's an easy standby. It's not really much of a causal dining experience. Every time you go they ask you if it's a special occasion. They brought the Dude an ice cream cake with a sparkler.

And so now he's 29. Well, he will be on Wednesday, but who's counting? He says he won't care when he turns 30, but who doesn't care at least a little? I know I'll care. Hell, I named my blog after it. It's a milestone birthday. Your body changes in your 30s. Your priorities often change. It strikes me as one of those ages where you've got to be more serious about your life. The 20s are about making mistakes, figuring out who you are and what you want. You're allowed to be an idiot.

If you're still an idiot in your 30s, you're not just young anymore. You are actually an idiot.

Thinking on my parents, my dad was a married father of two by 29 (though the married part would not last long into his 30s). And at 29, my mother was childless and unmarried. I know how she spent her 30s. She got started on a family. But her 20s were spent working, some travel, moving around, living in the city and having relationships. Had I been more curious about her when she was alive, I'd know more.

But as a kid I only wanted to know about her childhood. And as a teen, I only wanted to know about myself and my friends. Her 20s have a lot of question marks for me. My aunt, her closest sister and friend, tries to fill in the blanks. But trying to tell someone else's life story is a challenge. No matter how close you were or are, you still don't know all the details and chronology can get confused and you remember things differently, and it's from your perspective so certain events or people may have seemed more or less important to you than they may actually have been to the main character of that life story.

I was thinking about this at dinner, though less organized. The Dude wanted to know what I was thinking about. I kept these thoughts to myself at the time. It wasn't really Keg Mansion conversation.

I've been thinking about the daughter I hope to have one day. The more a woman knows about her mother's past, the better off she'll be. Even if it's sad or terrible or boring. I wish my mother had kept a diary. Or written some letters. There's something that seems wrong about her dying, beyond how untimely it was. I should have known more about her.