sarah turning 30

To Sarah, who is nearly thirty.

You might be the only person on the planet who worries more than I do. But keep these things* in mind as you approach your 10,956th day on Planet Earth:

Nobody under thirty understands how beer is made. Yeah, there are some giant kettles and some malted barley (whatever that is) and yeast gets thrown in there, and bam, you get beer. At least, that is how I always thought it happened. And then I turned 30. I bought a couple of books on beer. I got myself a beer making kit. I made some beer. I was still pretty confused, but at least I had figured out the steps involved, and done them in the correct order. Then I made another batch. It was easier the second time, and I noticed more things than I did the first time. "But you could have tried that when you were in your twenties, right?" Wrong. It has taken me this long to develop enough patience and discipline to figure out how to do this amazing thing. I'm happy it took this long, because I can use all of the other experiences I have had to make better beer than I ever could have made when I was younger.

You're a writer. Being a writer and turning 30 is like hitting the big leagues and being 20. You've got another 15 years of being a young writer, and you won't be considered an old writer until you turn 70. In other words, you've picked a wonderful profession.

Things that didn't make it to 30 years:

The Space Shuttle program. And it cost $192,000,000. That is enough money to pay rent on a 1-bedroom apartment for fifteen thousand years. Yes. You read that right. So no matter what happens, you will never fail as miserably/spend as foolishly as NASA. And this is coming from a guy who wanted to be an astronaut.

Brett Favre's career. Lord knows, he tried. We got to see all of it (the great, the good, the ok, the terrifying and the embarrassing). And it seemed so important at the time. But getting older reminds us that nobody is as important as our friends and family. Not Jonathan Taylor Thomas, not the cast of Friends, and certainly not Brett Favre. There will always be new heartthrobs, new must-see TV and Aaron Rodgers. And we get to see it all.

The Titanic. It was unsinkable, it had really fancy food, and Leonardo di Caprio and Kate Winslet got busy in that cargo-hold jalopi. But the thing was built with rotten steel. Sometimes the things which hold the most assured promise end up on the bottom of the ocean. It's all about what you are made of and where you are going, and not how splendidly you get there. (And sometimes, where you think you are going and where you actually end up are two very different places)

I think that the strangest thing about being this old is realizing that my Dad already had 3 kids (3,5 & 7!) when he turned thirty.

When I was a teenager, I couldn't figure out how to play jazz to save my life. The chord changes, the improvising, the speed- everything confused me. I could read music fairly well, so I was able to play everything correctly. I listened to enough jazz so I was able to emulate the rhythms and sound right. So I could play the melody and I didn't sound like a pasty white kid from Milwaukee. But I couldn't improvise. I kept listening to jazz, but didn't play my saxophone more than five or six times in my twenties. I did learn how to play a handful of folk rock songs on my guitar. This year, I decided to take a jazz improv class at the local community college. It has been frustrating, but it feels like a part of my brain that has been asleep for ten years has suddenly woken up. I play my scales every day. I make it a point to learn a little bit of theory every day. Some of it still doesn't make sense (why a #9 is different than a #2) but I have faith that it will. And I discovered that if I close my eyes and really listen to the music, I can improvise. The chord changes are important, but the letters on the page mean almost nothing. It all makes sense, if you just close your eyes and listen. (That was basically the same story as the beer story. But you have figured that out by now. Some stories are ok to tell more than once.)

And hey, maybe we can't be in Cirque du Soleil, but we are wise enough to be able to enjoy watching them without wanting to be them. And that is something to be happy about.

*all of the things listed in this post are truths in my imagination. my imagination has, at times, been known to spout truths that are un-prove-able. believe in them as you wish.

dreams

in one dream this week, at a renaissance fair, we had finally succeeded in building the wooly, wooden beast. she walked on four legs, stood four men high, and shook her head about like an excited pup. one of us was responsible for each leg, two were in her belly, and one each moved her head and tail. she was, apparently, a wondrous and enviable creation, as we were attacked without hesitation by a band of raiders. their arrows were dull, and one of my companions was able to catch one with her teeth.

in another dream, two points of light kidnapped a young child, possibly my older brother, when i was very young. the fear had been palpable for years, but we stayed in the same house and things returned to the way they were. one night, five years later, the lights returned for me.

this morning's dream i do not remember. i woke up and fell asleep twice after, and each time it was further away and less brilliant than before. probably it involved eating crabcakes or living in a re-run of seinfeld.