Nothing but time

 I don't take as many pictures as I used to. Not nearly.

I have mixed feelings about this. After my brother died and I realized the amount of photos I have of him and with him are finite, I strongly encouraged everyone to take as many photos as possible. I joked recently that Jason and I have about 1000 photos taken in front of our red door. I spent years documenting my workout photos, my meals. Lately though, I've found myself just...living. Vibing. Enjoying the moment in the moment.

 Part of me thinks I spent so much time and energy and effort documenting all those moments because I was so afraid I would forget them and that felt unbearable. I needed those moments. I had waited my whole life, worked so hard my whole life, just to get to have them. They had to be perfect and they had to be forever.

I have known my entire life that nothing is perfect, no matter how it looks from the outside. I will be fifty years old in nine days and I am also becoming increasingly aware that nothing is forever.

 

2025 has been year of transition and change. 

 Our amazing daughter, all on her own, bought her very first home. It's the perfect first home for her and reminds me a lot of who she is as a human: cute and quirky, but solid and dependable. She's always the child I've worried the least about, because she knows herself so very well. She's smart and responsible and makes good decisions. She has a job she loves and she's great at. She has amazing friends who treat her like family. She's happy, and there is nothing I want more for her, even though, if I'm being honest, it was very hard for me to have my daughter living thirteen miles away. Only thirteen miles, I know, and I joked with her that I could walk that distance to get to her if she needed me. I said that to make her feel better but I said it to make myself feel better too. Just because this life is exactly what I want for her doesn't mean it's not hard.

Despite saying she wanted to live alone, she purchased a three bedroom home and immediately upon closing invited her brother to be her roommate, so Jason and I became empty nesters. Jonathan is a college professor now, which fills me with a level of awe that is hard to explain, especially when I think about that little boy who struggled to learn to read, who would sit at the kitchen table with his sister working on homework together. She would rub his back lightly as he sounded out words, encouraging him in ways that perhaps only a twin could. I remember it so vividly. I will never forget those moments.

He's also met a woman that could someday be his wife and, speaking honestly, that is both extremely exciting and also terrifying for me, as a mother. I decided before I met his girlfriend that my feelings about her did not matter- as long as she loved my son and treated him kindly that was it. Period. I do like her though, very much, and I immediately recognized what a good match she is for him in so many ways. I had a very specific picture in my brain of who would be right for him (which I never, ever shared with him) and she ticks every single box. She fits in with our family so seamlessly, and I didn't realize how important that was to me. 

There are things to work out there though and last night she talked about someday when they go to live in her home country, and my heart didn't exactly break, but something caught there that I can't really explain.  Just because it's exactly what I want for him doesn't mean it's not hard. 

 

2025 is the year I turn fifty, and that seems transformative too.

 

Generally, I'm very excited and happy to be turning fifty. I am very healthy, both physically and spiritually. I have a calmness and peace that I have been seeking forever. My days are busy and full, and I'm grateful and glad for all the wonderful people I have in my life. I'm also so thankful for a calm and loving marriage, a quiet home, and my routines. My life does not look the way I thought it would look at fifty, but it's exactly what it's supposed to look like right now. There is so much comfort in that. There is so, so much joy in that.

Still, there are moments when fifty seems, well, old. Much older than I feel in my heart. I said quite wistfully to Jason, "It's like half my life is over" and he helpfully pointed that out that the average life expectancy of a woman in the United States is only 78.4 years old, so much more than half of my life is already over. He did concede that I will probably live to a hundred, and I assured him I have no doubt I will. Maybe even older.

Time marches on though, and so do I.

 

 You'll forgive me though, for sometimes seeing the college professor as that little boy wearing a jellybean helmet learning to ride a bike. For remembering that black lipstick that my daughter tried out in high school. For seeing my husbands smile for the first time ever in his uncle, and his cousin's son, and finally feeling like I got that extended family I always wanted. For still shedding tears when I think about Ginger, our Big Orange Dog from Knoxville. Our tiny little brown house that wasn't quite big enough to hold all the love that was there. I have forgotten more than I'll ever remember, but what I do remember is so, so precious.

 

I'm just out here living in these moments.