I did an illegal u-turn so I could take that picture of the trashed balloons. At the time, I found it funny to see someone trashing their thirties. My thirties were great! This was my first thought, but then I remembered my real thirties versus my imaginary thirties. My thirties were a complete shit show. I entered my thirties with a broken family wrecked by loss. When Chris and I celebrated the end of 2005, we celebrated with a real hope that the new year would be better. Then Chris’s Dad’s cancer came back and we entered the years of slogging our way through bogs of grief, depression and despair to find some glimmer of joy.

You know those round water bumper boats with the smelly gas engines. I used to beg to ride those as a kid and every time Dad would relent the money for a ticket, I would end up stuck in a corner going nowhere, just spinning. This describes my early thirties. There was grief on top of grief, living with a mother-in-law who I was constantly struggle to connect with, trying to dig out of debt and just stuck. Spinning in the corner. Next, I would move into a job where I killed mice every day for science. I’d often end my work day crying in a bathroom stall over all the carnage and how science wasn’t fun any more. Then I would watch my best friend deteriorate and die, only to have to repeat that process with my Dad. The rest of my thirties would be spent just trying to figure out how to live my life without that best friend and finding some sense of self. By the time I entered my forties, I felt like a wise old sage. Though, now that I’m in my mid-forties, I feel less wise and more old. Despite the train wreck of my thirties, I wouldn’t throw those years away. In those years, I would acquire the confidence in myself that I never had in my twenties. I don’t mean just a physical confidence, but a mental confidence, a belief in myself. I found that I was really good at teaching yoga and that I loved teaching. Those years brought me my scooter, which has been a constant source of glee. I grew my own vegetables and I made pickles and sauerkraut. I found my writing voice and discovered a creativity that had been locked deep inside me. I started taking my photography more seriously. Chris and I finally did what we always said we were going to do and that was to move out of Oklahoma. I moved into a job that made science fun again and did not leave me crying in the bathroom at the end of a work day. I learned some valuable life lessons in my thirties. Sure, they happened to be punch-in-a-gut hard lessons, but sometimes a lesson has to be difficult in order to really learn it. If it hadn’t been for the shit show that was my thirties, I would not be the woman I am today.

Of course that can be said of any decade. If I could say anything to the birthday celebrant who put those balloons out for trash pickup, it would be to savor and pay attention to every moment. Not just the moments in your thirties. All of the moments. Swim around in the painful moments until your fingers are wrinkly. Really soak those in because those moments make the good moments so so so so good. It’s like the painful moments rip a layer of skin off and the good moments are skin graphs that grow in that space. You might be under the impression that turning thirty will suddenly make you a grownup. That is not true. You will make grownup decisions, probably more of them than you did in the previous ten years of your life, but you will not be a grownup. There is no defining age for being a grownup. This is important because the less you dwell on the concept of being a grownup, the better off you are. I mean, be a grownup when it is absolutely necessary, but all other times allow yourself moments of silliness and play. Have ice cream for dinner. If your gut is telling you to pull the car over to explore some derelict building that looks interesting, do it. There’s a 60% chance of rain forecasted for the day? Ride the scooter anyway; there is a 40% chance it won’t.

And vote. Always vote.