Turning 28 and Who I'm Not

I turned twenty-eight this December.  My mood was as bleak as the weather.  I cried in the kitchen most of the night while making dinner.  I wasn't sad I was older.  That doesn't really bother me.  It was that it had been ten years since I had turned eighteen and things have not exactly turned out as planned.  To say I was full of idealistic romantic nonsense is an understatement. 

I found a piece of paper I had written down 100 goals in one of my classes my senior year.  While I've accomplished twenty of them, I'm not exactly sure the goals were that difficult or that...sane.  For your reading pleasure I've plucked just a handful of inexplicable goals. 

Ahem. 

Number 66:  Take a ride in a dryer.  Hmm.  I'd like to say I don't remember what this was all about but I do.  I overheard a classmate talking one day in seminary about how her and her friends had gone to a local laundromat and taken "rides" in the over sized dryers.  For whatever reason her story set my imagination on fire and I just had to experience the thrill of...of...extreme heat, dangerous conditions, and vomit inducing dizziness? 

Number 69: Be a massuse.  That's right, a MASSUSE.  Not that being a masseuse is not a worthy goal, but my spelling was horrendous.  And that's definitely not going to happen.  With Ava climbing on my lap fifty times a day and commanding I rub her back I give all the massaging I can deal with. 

Number 72:  Own lots of lingerie.  At least I spelled that right.  This list is just making me sound dumber and dumber isn't it?  So ambitious.  I have to think that for a hormonal eighteen year-old the forbidden mystery of lingerie must have seemed intriguing.  I wonder what the teacher grading my paper thought?

Number 81:  Never see a rated R movie.  I must have either been lying to myself or I had suppressed the memory of ALREADY having watched a rated R movie.  I was in 8th grade sleeping over at a friend's house.  She put in a movie.  I asked what it was and she replied "Pretty Woman".  That was one of those moments when I pictured my story being featured in The New Era.  I would valiantly suggest we watch a more wholesome movie and feel that warm glow from not giving into peer pressure.  Then Richard Gere popped up on the screen and I didn't open my mouth for the next hour and a half.  Not proud.

Number 82:  Quit drinking caffeine.  Still working on that one, curse you Coca Cola.

Number 85:  Live to see world peace.  I'm sure I pictured myself lounging in one of my many pieces of lingerie, resting my arthritic MASSUSE fingers, sipping on a glass of water, and reflecting on my thrilling ride in a dryer while I watched the crawling news banner run across the bottom of CNN announcing WORLD PEACE HAS BEEN ACHIEVED!  GO OUT AND HUG A STRANGER!  Noble?  Yes.  Realistic?  Probably not. 

Number 88: Make dinner for a week.  HAHAHAHAHAHA!  Someone else making my food for 19 years must have dulled my wits.  I wonder what I imagined would happen after I grew up and got married.  A handsome Italian husband who cooks and cleans?  We are wealthy enough to eat out every night?  Or I have a live-in chef?  My bet is on number three.  I didn't even know how to clean a toilet properly until I was 20.  At least I can check this puppy off of my list!  Score one for me!

Number 93:  Get a pettacure.  Once again spelling.  I was a country gal, okay.  The closest I got to a pedicure was sinking my tootsies into the manure laced muck in the bottom of City Creek as I waded.  I can also check this one off but I'm still waiting for a decent pedicure given by someone who will actually massage my feet instead of soaking them and then painting my toenails. 

Number 43:  Get tan.  This one is laugh worthy.  By now I've accepted my ghostly pallor as something I can't change unless I want to subject myself to cancer causing tanning bed rays.  I already have enough premature lines showing up on my face, I definitely don't need an accelerant. 

Number 48:  Have tonz of grandkids.  Tonz.  I remember when I used to use words like this.  And how back in the day it was cool to replace an S with a Z. 

So I guess while I'll never be eighteen again with so many question marks about my future staring me in the face I can say if I made a list today it would be quite a bit different.  Hopefully these last ten years have taught me a lesson about what is meaningful and worthwhile. 

The fact is I did let my regrets about the things I have not accomplished get me down for a couple of hours on the evening of December 6th, but whenever Ava says something that makes me laugh or tells me how good of a mom I am (praise I don't really deserve) I realize the work I am doing now, though at times tedious and thankless, is something that will make a difference in the world.  Because it makes a difference to Ava. 

I'm not the adventurous, globetrotting, lingerie owning, tan, athletic archaeologist/novelist/social worker/ballet dancer married to a foreign good-looking man of wealth.  But you know what?  I'm okay with that.  I'm a restless stay at home mother of one, who continues to learn lessons about love, patience and faith from a group of amazing people in my life.  I struggle with my self image, my weight, and where I'm going in life.  I love to laugh and dance and read and write.  Some days I get lonely and depressed.  Some days the house is an utter disaster.  Some days all I can do is grit my teeth and pray to make it through.  I'm human.  I'm trying to do better.  I know who I'm not, but I'm still trying to figure out who I am.