Nostalgia

Car parked in driveway, dusk settling around us. Food in our bellies, our livers and pancreases working harder than ever to dilute the grilled catfish and gin and tonics into usable calories...

"So, what's the plan?"

Silence.

Stephanie: "Uh-oh. Are we in our mid thirties and officially out of juice?"

We are. Getting drunk and pulling stunts has lost its appeal and hauling ourselves out of lawn chairs requires a sort of grunting and not just a little scuffling of feet trying to get a purchase on the deck.

We're getting older. Not old. Just older. Two of us are pregnant. Two of us are moving to China. Two of us are planning a wedding (sort of). Two of us have moved far enough away that traveling is just more effort than it's worth. The band's breaking up. It's hard to watch. It's hard to reconcile. Just a few years ago, my body would have ignored the metric tons of gin passing through it and would have just jumped in that stolen grocery cart being pushed by someone full of whiskey and laughed long into the night.

Now I'm worried about taking multivitamins.

Where is the rite of passage for the thirty-somethings? Our twenties have all these significant mileposts: graduating from college, moving in with boy/girlfriend, moving away from home, making our first disposable income... but the thirties... they turn in rather than out. And now we are here... the late twenties having slipped away under cover of night without so much as a goodbye note. We thirty-somethings are filled with routine and tendencies towards security and safety. We are ritualized and ordered. We smile quietly and run our fingers through our hair when we talk. We don't make as much noise as we used to.

I guess the next logical thing is kids. Except, we're only just starting to have them. We are, by necessity, peeling off and reconsidering our alliances, making new ones. Ones with people who know things about childhood development and who are available at 6 am. We're trading our beer cozies for baby rattles and it feels... normal. I have to wonder about my parents who had me nearly ten years earlier in their lives than my friends are having their kids. I was born when my mom was 24. TWENTY FOUR. What was I doing at 24? Being an idiot. Abusing myself. Working for the weekends. Hanging out in great clusters of friends. NOT raising children.

Which ultimately leads to the question: If I'm not having kids, what AM I doing with my life? Whereas kids once sounded like needy, codependent things, they now sound like fun playthings, things that make you want to get up in the morning because they love you unconditionally, things that enrich your life, not just suck the life out of you. All those notions have been turned on their heads. Intellectually, of course. I mean, in my head it all has been turned around. Has my heart been turned? How many cute babies do I have to see before my loins ache to house one of my own? Apparently, I need more convincing. I am not compelled. Yet.

What is this thing I need to do? Write a book? Get some sort of traveling done? Get a degree?

I laid in bed this morning at 3 am wondering about birth pains. Imagining the different intonations each of my girlfriends' primal screams would take on. I had cramps, so I imagined my own birth pains. I thought of my struggle with endometriosis, of my mother's same struggle with it, of my sister's, I thought of the twins that have occurred in my future husband's family, I thought of the twins that have occurred in my dad's side of the family. I thought of the miracle that it would be if my tiny frame, my small runt body of the litter, ballooned one day to house another set of look-alike babies. And of the days of labor. And the joy. And the mounds of laundry everyone always talks about. And the things those children would teach me. Teach us. My new husband and me. Would we last? Would I prove to myself that I could do it? Would my weaknesses get the better of me? Am I even meant to labor like that? It seems like after everything else I have inherited, physical and mental, that I should not have to endure such pains to create a legacy of my own.

Sometimes my hands find their way to my bellybutton and they lovingly cup those ghost children. It is years of slouching and overeating that I hold there- not a baby, but indecision and boredom on cold days, and my compulsion to work long hours without stretching.

Sometimes I strain my eyes to see past the mountains in the distance, imagining that beyond them lies some place I have simply overlooked for the requisite amount of easy living and sunshine... and that, if I just squint harder, what will come into focus is where I am meant to be.

The Old Adage Was Right: Monkeys Should NOT Jump On The Bed

I rarely have occasion to say "Here's another nice mess you've gotten me into", Stanley. But Wednesday morning was different.

You know, we're real adult around our house. We definitely do NOT do things like speak in a weird language to each other. We definitely do not regularly refer to the neighbor's pet as "Roof Dog" and try to take clandestine pictures of it. And we definitely do not attempt WWF wresting moves on our bed in the morning before work.

Alright, we do all those things and you know it.

Another really adult thing we do? Wait for THE most inopportune moments to tell each other REALLY important stuff that affects our lives. Burdy, for instance, likes to set up plans in the space of a few seconds between my kissing him goodbye and walking out the door in the morning for work. It usually sounds like this:

"K.Bye!Oh,andJillandGabrielinvitedusoverfordinneronThursday,shouldIsayyes?Itooktheboatmotortotherepairshopandit'sgoingtocostlikefiftydollarstofix,butIfgurethatthat'sbetterthanmetryingtofixitandscrewingitup,right? Oh,andyoucanjusthavemybluetooth,sodon'tgoandbuyone.IfoundmineandIneveruseitanymore,plusIhavemywiredsetsoyoucanjusthavetheoldone. Isthereanythingforlunchinthefridge?ShouldIbuythoseplaneticketstogobacktoJerseyinAugust?Whattimeareyoucominghome?ImightstaylateatAikidotonight! Bye!"

And I have a very bad habit of trying to tell him every last thing I've thought of in the past 24 hours in the few moments in takes him to fall asleep at night.

Me: Have you fixed the boat motor yet?

Burdy: Mmmmfff.

Me: I'm thinking about getting a new Bluetooth. I hate the wired thingee I use.

Burdy: Mmmmff.

Me: Shoot. We still have to get those plane tickets, don't we?

Burdy: ...Zzzzzzz....

The (obvious) problem with both of these scenarios is that both of us is stumbling (or lying around, as it were) in alpha wave mode when the other is trying to talk to the other... and well, we wind up forgetting a lot of what the other one is saying. I mean you would think after twelve years together, we would understand that the only real time we are awake and functioning at the same time is around lunch and that when I am trundling towards the bathroom with my shirt all twisted around my torso and my hair doing its best Don King impersonation and my eyes all slitty and crusted over , it is NOT the best time to tell me that we are scheduled to make an appearance at like 5 parties this weekend, so clear my calendar... but, Burdy doesn't recognize zombies when he sees them. (Mostly deaf, still-dreaming zombies who are groping the air for coffee mugs and sugar bowls.) And I, apparently, can't appreciate that "lights out" does not mean "divulge the contents of your psyche".

Anywho, Wednesday morning, I actually got up early (SERIOUSLY. How do you people with the jobs do it?) and I made my way down to the chiropractor (to learn I have minor scoliosis in my upper back! Huzzah!) and then home again. I was wide awake by the time I got home. And so was Burdy. And so we actually talked like real adults. About weekend plans and where we were going to be at dinner time.

And then he decided it would be fun to test out the bed with wrestling moves.

So, we got this king sized bed from the parents of Giggles and Little Man. We've always known we've wanted a king sized bed. It's like the ONE luxury item we have pined for. The only item of excess we felt we deserved. Because we are really frugal and don't spend money on things like cars and clothes and jewelry. And because Burdy kicks and punches in his sleep.

Anywho, we got this awesome, marshmallowy, huge king-sized mattress. Burdy's kicks now happen in another zip code and I can't feel a thing. It's a perfect mattress. Perfect for, for example, launching yourself from the corner and body-slamming a pillow.

Now, our old mattress, it was a platform bed. Very low to the ground. The new bed? She's practically at chest height for me. So maybe Burdy hadn't done the calculations involved. Big bed, regular sized ceilings, overhead lamp complete with seventies style shade (probably full of dead bugs), plus six foot tall man launching three feet into the air, arcing DIRECTLY underneath the lamp....

equals one surprised man clam-shelled on his back in the bed, his hair and pajamas full of microscopic pieces of glass, his eyes wide open in shock, his hands open in front of him, his mouth frozen in the shape of the words OOOOOOOOOOH, FUUUUUUUUUUUDGE.

And one woman laughing hysterically going to fetch the dustpan.