30 rocks

been doing some thinking...of course i have - i was in the field.

when you are in the field things are slow. i appreciated that considering that upon my arrival back in the states things are feeling more like warp speed. the only slow time i got before returning to the utah desert was the three days i spent in bed with bronchitis...and those days went by fast from my perspective, being asleep and all. so it was nice to hop into a truck and drive out to where life moves in the circle of the sun, and everything takes time.

in the midst of making a set of spindles to match my set of defiant girls i let my mind wander, as it has a tendency to do. i came upon a memory from the day before in which one of my students asked me my age. usually when a new staff goes into the field an "intro group" is held in which we all rattle off a series of predetermined bits of personal information - one of these being your age. i generally go out of my way to avoid doing these groups. i prefer to get information from my students by chatting them up rather than watching them zone out to the point of drooling while they hear their group-mates intone the same schtick that they did last week. as a result i had not shared my age with my students.

it is interesting to note that teenagers have no concept of age or time. most see the world as a series of things that are either "cool" (read - around my age) or "old" (read - around my parents' age). my boyfriend has a great tale to illustrate this. in a conversation about bob dylan, the beatles, and the doors, one kid stated to him "wow - music was so good when you were kids." he's 31, and that happened in 2009.

i used to amuse myself by answering the question "how old are you?" with a question of my own, "how old do you think i am?" eventually i got tired of kids telling me i looked about forty...not because i harbor some vanity about my looks, but simply because this kind of assertion is so pathetically unobservant that it pains me. i moved on to simply stating my age as it is and leaving it at that.

so i surprised myself when i answered "i will be 30 in may," instead of claiming my current age of 29.

i wondered why i did this. in the end i came up with a couple of reasons. first, being born in 1980, i generally align my age with the last digit of the year. once the year turns over i start thinking like i have already aged accordingly. i also will find that because at the new year i am more than halfway to my next age that i start thinking of myself as older. perhaps i did it out of wishful thinking while growing up and just never got out of the habit. i also could have done it because there is more shock value in being 30, and it got me the answer "really? you don't look 30," (be still my vain vain heart). i also considered that i abhor the cliche of the woman who always says she is 29. ever since i hit that overused age i have been avoiding telling people for fear they will not actually believe me.

but really i think that the reason i answered that i was going to be 30 was that i have been anticipating what that will mean for some time now. i know that there are lots of women out there who fear aging and are unhappy about a 3 at the start of their age instead of a 2, but i do not fall into that category. instead i have been looking forward to leaving the world of twenty-somethings and being, what seems to me, more substantial.

not that i think that simply changing a number associated with my time on earth makes me wiser or better or stronger. indeed there is little change in going to sleep one number and waking up another. however, the prospect of turning 30 has led me to reflect on my life and who i am growing to be. it seems an accomplishment to make it this far and to look back down the path behind me. i can see all the experiences and epiphanies - the things that make me, me. it feels good to look at all that and feel happy with where i am in life. though i know that i can do that at any moment, i think that completing a three-decades long trip around the sun lends itself to introspection.

of course, the saturn return helps...

though i still have a couple of months until i am thirty in any place more than my mind, i am glad to have this period of thought and self-searching. i feel like i am seeking to embrace a new era in my life. i wonder what will come of it.