Yesterday was my son’s 36th birthday. It feels so momentous to have a child that old. Of course it makes me think back to what I was doing when I was 36.
I was raising a 6 year old who had just finished up kindergarten. I was working a job I hated, at a company I loved. We had passed the one year anniversary of our move from California back to purchase my childhood home in Connecticut. My father lived with us for five years after that. My mother-in-law was diagnosed with cancer that April and in the next month, my husband would travel back to California to visit her one last time.
My son was loving life in 1996, oblivious, I hope, to the turmoil around him. He was spending days at the YMCA camp along with after camp care until one of us picked him up. He spent some Fridays with a friend’s family at a favorite Rhode Island beach. Most weekends were spent at my sister’s in-law’s pool with the rest of his cousins by marriage.
It was a time of trying to make everyone happy. Appease everyone. Get to work, don’t fuck up, don’t get sick because then someone had to do my job. Make sure no one felt slighted or offended by any choices I made. I didn’t have that living in California, but I had it in aces here.
It did smooth out and get better. I left that job and found another closer to home with better hours, and better pay. I adjusted to life in the family fold while creating my own life with my own family.
That’s a look at my summer at 36.
Thoughts From The Passenger Seat 