And now you are FOUR!

Dear Jordan,

For weeks now, when people have asked you how old you are, you have enthusiastically responded, "Free! And then I'm going to be FOUR, and then I'm going to be FIVE!"

(And I have thought, oh, to be in the hurry-up years! Because leading up to my birthday, I certainly wasn't saying, "Forty-three! And then I'm going to be FORTY-FOUR and then I'm going to be FORTY-FIVE!)

But back to you, my sweet love.

You've said these words with so much gusto, and with the proffering of the appropriate number of fingers - FOUR! - and the whole hand - FIVE! - which almost knocked you over over every time.

But now, now you are FOUR.

You are my first born, the one who made me a mama. You are charming and lovely and hilarious. And sweet. Boy howdy, are you sweet.

Your sister follows you around, and wants to be everywhere you are and do everything you do. She wants to hold whatever you are holding, play with whatever you are playing with, and eat what you are eating. Right off your plate.

When you see her coming, you gather up your things and get all panicky. She will walk over and grab and shove. This, understandably, upsets you no end.

I want to tell you to just haul off and whack her, but it seems inappropriate.

The other day she was pushing or pulling you - I can't remember which. You started to shriek, and I finally cracked. I said, "You're bigger than her! Just shove her!"

And you replied, "But Mama! I'll hurt her!"

Today, however, I saw you fighting back. I see this as a positive.

You refer to her as your baby. As in, "My baby and I like to eat waffles."

She drives you pure up the wall, but you also love her tremendously, and you don't want her left out of anything. But she does need to stay the fuck away from your Lego. And your cement mixer. Oh, and your crane.

You still love all things construction, and you are quick to correct when I refer to an excavator as a backhoe. It was a word I did not know until you learned it. And now they're all backhoes to me.

You and Daddy once got caught in the rain and had dinner at the bar at the Hilton, and now sometimes, when you're not interested in what's for dinner, you'll turn to him and say, "Why don't we have dinner at the bar at the Hilton?"

It sounds bad, my friend.

You are so kind and loving. You're effusive. You make proclamations like, "I really enjoyed that!" and "That would be just perfect!"

You love your mama and your daddy and your baby and your nana.

You love waffles, Oreos, and cupcakes. You love mac and cheese and grilled cheese, even though you hate cheese. You love McDonalds' Happy Meals. And milkshakes. Except when they're too cold.

You love cars and trucks and the aforementioned construction equipment. You adore monster trucks. You love Mater and, as you call him, Lightening LaQueen (as my friend Jeanne says, "a true drag car.")

You still have a slight lisp, and you pronounce many words with a New York accent. And lisp. For example, "cars" is pronounced "cwaath."

It is charming. We do not know where this comes from.

You love your purple crocs - which you chose - and truck and car and bulldozer shirts and the pink hat with the butterflies.

You love rocks and sand and you would dig all day if you could. You love spraying the hose on the deck with Nana. You absolutely insist on being naked for this activity. When we have company and are sitting out back you keep your clothes on as long as you can, and then you hit a point where you can bear it no longer.

I take it as a sign that you are very European. Naturally, I'm in favor.

You have always loved books, and now that you watch videos, you love Bob the Builder, and Curious George, and Fireman Sam, even though they have those Welsh accents.

You are my lovely lovely boy.

I realized this past weekend when I met so many of your dad's camp friends, many of whom he has known since he was maybe 11 or 12, how fast you will grow up and away from us. I need to savor these times. I need to embrace the fact that you still want me to kiss your knee when you bump it, and you believe that makes it better.

You are four. I mean, FOUR! (Too soon you will be FIVE!)

And I love you more than sunshine.

Love love love,

Mama

So please tell me I look like a French tourist because I am trying very hard to do so

So a week or so ago I asked Nick what he thought about these silver sneakers:

Nick suggested that it's perhaps not the highest and best use of our money (translation: dislike). But I kind of love them.

But I decided to be practical and get them in black (see above).

I opened the box with delight, put them on, and asked Nick what he thought. He made a face. He said, "I'm not a fan. You look like a French tourist."

I thanked him. I said, "That's one of the nicest things you've ever said to me."

Today I am 44

This much I know right now (not comprehensive, and in stream of consciousness kind of order):

I am older than many of our parents were when we were in high school. And they were old! So impossibly grown up!

My husband is that grown up. I will never be that grown up

I am OK with this. (Pretty sure he is, too.)
 
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I like myself so much better than I ever have in my life. I have more wrinkles, more brown spots, and now my hair is blonde thanks to the good grace of chemicals, modern foil techniques, and a lovely woman named Sarah.

And yet, I also have so much more confidence. It makes the other things matter significantly less.

Which is not to say I haven't thought about Botox.

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I have no ability to discern good music from bad. I embrace all things 80s, and 80s dance songs from 1983-1987 seem to be the only ones with lyrics I actually know.

I never know anything musically cool or new. Copacabana remains one of my favorite songs.

Happily, I no longer feel like I need to hide these facts.

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Blogging changed my life. It made me realize that other people thought many of the same bizarro things that I do, and feel the same intense feelings.

And the people who were going to judge me for thinking and feeling these things out loud were not people I needed in my life.

It was incredibly liberating.

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Right now I weigh about 10 pounds more than I did in high school Actually, 10-20, depending on the year. But I think I look better than I did back then. I'm stronger and healthier. So much healthier.

Well, not everything looks better. I had significantly nicer abs before babies. Same goes for my boobs.

I do miss my happy little cupcakes.

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My kids are the best thing I have ever done, the best gift I have ever been given. I had no idea how much richer my life would be.

I also had no idea how much sleep I actually need. It is approximately 1-4 hours more than I get on a given night.

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This is going to be the year I write my book. It is.

Saying that out loud terrifies me and pulls out all my insecurities.

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And I still feel like an imposter when I put on lipstick. I don't know why.

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The only thing that really matters to me is the people I love. That's all life comes down to. I love our house, and I do, of course, have some fantastic boots, but let's be honest: people are what matter.

And I have excellent taste in people. I do. This struck me the other day, and I know it for an absolute fact.

Which might even make some of you wonder how I managed to hold it together for so long in the first place

I had this job at this place that I liked so much that I stayed for almost eight years. 

Eight years may not be a lot to some of you, but I've always tended to live jobs in dog years, and thus there are number of one-to-two year jobs on my resume.

Eight, for me, is a very long time.

And I liked my job, and I adored and respected my boss and so many of my colleagues. But I have kids and I have a mom I'd like to spend more time with and so one day a couple months prior to my last day I told my boss that I needed to spend the bulk of my time working for much shorter and far less reasonable people.

(This had been in the works for quite some time. It's not like suddenly I was like, oh, I think I'll just step out of the paid workforce that I've been in for half my life. Cover me, would you, honey? And is the start of a whole nother topic or 37.)

All of this led me to my last day on my job and my goodbye happy hour. Actually, I had two Last Days. Because, gin. And fun friends. And lack of moderation.

And the fact that I really should drink alone.

I know this, and yet it's so much more fun to do out in public. With awesome people!

So. The Goodbye Happy Hour.

It started out all friendly professional drinksy. As the night wore on, the group whittle down to some of my closest people.

Ken! My dear friend and my New York work trip buddy! We've had hours and hours of conversation in transit, in train stations, out for dinners.

Things were still relatively normal at this point.

And here is Eric! My friend from the very beginning! And Kaysha! Who got me started reading Dooce and encouraged me to start blogging! In fact, thinking back, we had inappropriate conversations way back when.

And Jeanne! Makeup and pop-culture lady extraordinaire! We're slightly shiny happy people, but not yet nutso.

And here's where things start to get a little blurrier.

Look! We have mints! Awesome! Mints! Take a picture! We love mints!

Aaaand then we went outside. It turns out I thought it would be fun to lay down on the grate and look up at...the stars? The people we made walk around us?

Not so clear on this one. All I know is I thought it was a good idea, and Kaysha decided to join me.

We stayed for a while. We laughed so very, very hard. Holy cow, did we laugh.

Yah. I don't know either.

And then Eric, who doesn't drink much and offered to drive us both home, also offered to go up to our office and help me take my framed pictures down. Over eight years, I'd decorated a number of the walls. There was a lot of art to take home.

I was very grateful for the help getting them down and to my house. Since I walk to work or take the bus, I'd been planning to come down with my car another day and get help hauling them all down.

So there we were, at the office, collecting my art. Thank God, or rather Eric, that we all got home safely.

The next morning, when I got to my desk, I noticed that my trash can and recycling bin, among other things, were strewn about my cube. So weird.

Until Kaysha sent me the following. I have some vague recollection of thinking this was a good idea.

I mean, who leaves their job without taking CSI: Our Office photos?

And all I can say is that I may be crazy, but I haven't laughed that much in years. And I miss the hell out of my friends there.

Our Town

Last week I went to a funeral and a mini high school reunion, the latter of which would not have happened without the former.

The father of two brothers - both friends of mine from Delhi days - had passed away, and they came to DC for the funeral. One called me to give me the news, which I passed on to another dear friend, and those few of us in town jumped quickly to offer support.

We were so very sad about the circumstances, but delighted to be together. I remember this juxtaposition of grief and joy from my dad's memorial service.

I hadn't seen either brother - the older of whom took me to my junior prom, and hand-to-God was back then the most beautiful man I had ever seen up close in my life - since 1986. Which, if you don't feel like doing the math, is 27 years.

And yet, as I am reminded every time there is a Delhi gathering, it doesn't matter how long it's been. We will hug a genuine, warm embrace. We will catch others up on intervening years, introduce spouses, show pictures of children.

And then the reminiscing begins.

It was funny, you know, because next week Nick and I are going to New Hampshire, and ever since we'd booked tickets, I'd been thinking I should get in touch with my dear high school friend Paul, who played the stage manager in our high school's rendition of Our Town by Thornton Wilder.

Here's my friend Paul. We're more grown up than I ever imagined possible way back in 1985.

Our Town remains, to this day, one of my favorite plays, and my only knowledge of New Hampshire.

So I thought about Paul, and the other friends in the play, and the hours and days and weeks we all spent working on our lines and what an extraordinary thing it was to be involved in, during what would turn out to be, except for marriage and babies, the best, most extraordinary time of my life.

It was the era of the Breakfast Club, but we were all jocks and nerds and queens and thespians and musicians. Some of us were even criminals to some degree.

None of us were unpopular. None of us were marginalized.

I thought about how it had been too long, and how we don't live that far apart, and how I should reach out and see how his life was going.

And then my life got in the way, as it does.

Then suddenly there we were, all crying and hugging at the funeral. And later, all drinking Taj Mahal beer and eating Indian food and laughing over antics from 30 years prior.

Here are two Pauls. Doing Zoolander. I know I look like a creepy intruder. But I wasn't. I promise. And the other guy in the photo is very private, so you only have a peek at his shoulder.

Here, here's how it mostly is when we get together. You laugh and laugh till you cry.

In a side conversation, I overheard Paul (in the stripes) telling his lovely girlfriend how hard our crowd can be for significant others. Not because we want to exclude anyone. But because we are all so focused on each other.

It is something I have never experienced in another group of people. It's a bit like being in love in the initial stages. Everyone is beautiful, brilliant, hilarious, and fascinating.

You can hear that story of that one thing that happened in 11th grade over and over and over, and still it is the funniest/most daring/craziest thing you have ever heard. And you want to hear it again. You request it.

(You could see how spouses might tire of two solid days of this.)

In this crowd, you are your very best self, not because you are trying to be, but because everyone sees you for who you are, and they love you for the you-ness of you. It makes you feel wonderful.

Beyond that, you do not have to explain anything. You pull words and phrases out that have sat unused for years: sports conventions, ACSA, proms, Pepperling, Janpath, camel treks, Malcha Marg, the Gunghroo, movies at the embassy, Claridge's, the Marine house. They all mean something to this group that they do not mean to anyone else.

It fills up my heart to spend time with these old friends. It's like I finally figured out after the last reunion: these people are home. It's a hard thing to come down from.

And every once in a while you get a terrible reminder of the transitory nature of life. An underlining of the fact that people you love are all there is.

I need to make sure I carve time out for more of them.

The morning star always gets wonderful bright the minute before it has to go, doesn't it?