10 years

My 28th birthday is at the end of July, which means it's 10 years since I graduated from high school.  That birthday, coupled with watching my youngest sister finish high school and prepare to start college, has made me think a lot about the last ten years and what I was doing during those last ten birthdays.

When I turned 18, I was kind of an anxiety mess.  I don't exactly remember the details, but I know I was in a doctor's office during the middle of IB exams and public-speaking finals (which were simultaneous).   I remember this as a really crazy time, plus I had the obligatory high-school boyfriend that I didn't want to leave.  I started at BYU a few weeks after my birthday, going out early for Late Summer Honors (a program I loved and would highly recommend).  I met two of my three best college friends there (the third I'd met the summer before at Summer Scholars) and decided that I really and truly loved BYU (goodbye, high school boyfriend). 

My nineteenth birthday found me working in my dad's office back home--I'd stayed out for spring term and come home for summer.  My freshman year had been amazing and wonderful in every way.  I came home that summer feeling like I needed to prepare for marriage (isn't that what the parents of every nineteen-year-old girl want to hear?)  I spent my free time reading things like Boyd K. Packer's The Holy Temple and talking to my mom in endless detail about the guys I'd dated.  Six weeks after my nineteenth birthday, and two weeks into the semester, I went on my first date with Neil.  He asked me to marry him four weeks later.

The summer that I turned twenty, Neil and I were working together as custodians (he also had another "real" job working as an engineer at my uncle's company).  I know a lot of people dread custodial work, but we really loved this summer--we had taken the jobs on purpose so we could spend more time together, since we were both really busy with summer classes, and it was actually really fun having those 4 hours just laughing together and mopping floors and emptying trashcans.  (Plus we were lucky enough to be working at the BYU bindery, which was really cool, so mostly we were sweeping up paper scraps and checking out whatever interesting book had been printed that day.) Weird, I know, but we liked it.  We also did some fun things like going camping in Moab and Yellowstone--this was a really fun summer.

My twenty-first birthday was not quite as much fun.  Neil was working about 60 hours a week in Salt Lake and I was working three jobs myself.  We made a lot of money that summer, but everything else is pretty much a blur--both of us were constantly exhausted.  We didn't do any fun road trips, but we spent a lot of time just driving up Provo Canyon and talking.  I had just finished my undergrad at BYU after three years and was getting ready to start grad school that fall, and I was pregnant with Abigail. 

The summer of my twenty-second birthday was one of the hardest of my life.  Neil had accepted an internship with Whirlpool, and we were living in this tiny little town that had two things: Lake Michigan beaches and Whirlpool's international headquarters.  Nothing else, not even a grocery store.  I was terrified to go anywhere with this new baby (plus we only had one car, and Neil took it to work).  I spent most of the summer lying on the couch reading Agatha Christie mysteries, eating chocolate chips, and crying.  I was SO glad to go back to grad school and teaching in the fall, and I was panicked about what I would do when I actually graduated the next year. 

When I turned twenty-three, I had just finished my master's and Neil had finished his undergrad degree, and we moved across country so that he could start grad school.  With the previous summer in mind, I pretty much bent over backwards working to make friends.  One of those friends suggested we start going to work out together three mornings a week, and I lost ten pounds and realized that I really loved exercising.  I also learned to can jam and fruit this summer, bought a bike, and started being more self-sufficient and adventurous.  I started teaching at the university just a few weeks after my birthday. 

The summer I turned twenty-four, I was teaching summer classes and waiting for Juliet's birth.  We planted our first garden this summer, and I fell in love with digging around out there in the dirt and watching tiny seeds turn into actual food.  I decided I wanted to start running again--something I hadn't done with any degree of regularity since seventh grade--and began after Juliet was born.

My sister Ruth got married a few weeks before my twenty-fifth birthday. We made the trek out to Utah for the first time since we finished at BYU, and camped through Rocky Mountain National Park and Yellowstone.  The trip was definitely the highlight of our summer.  This is about the time that I really started to feel more secure in my role as mother--I could relax and enjoy what I was doing. 

When I turned twenty-six, it was with a new little baby Isaac in my arms.  Our lives had fallen into a pretty predictable pattern by now--garden and can all summer, teach and work all winter.  I told the university I was done teaching because I needed to be spending more time home with the children, then agreed to try teaching online as a compromise.  I also quit doing instructional design from home and started taking yoga classes.

Just before my twenty-seventh birthday, we took the kiddos on an eight-day camping spree across the eastern US.  A few days after my birthday, I started training for my second half-marathon.  I think this is the year that I finally started to feel okay about my need to pursue other interests aside from my family--I was able to let the guilt go (feeling bad about my eagerness to get out of the house occasionally) and focus on the good things that I was learning and doing, and come back to my "real job" refreshed and happy to be mothering.

And now I'm just a few weeks away from twenty-eight.  Getting closer to thirty, and looking back over the last decade.  On Facebook I can see that my friends are all living out the various incarnations of their high school dreams--some have finished med school, others are waiting tables in NYC while they wait for their big break.  Over the last decade I've acquired one husband, two college degrees, four children, a pile of battered running shoes, seven years of university teaching, a better relationship with my parents and sisters (one of the things I am most grateful for), and I've finally figured out how to bake a decent loaf of bread.  And I think, generally speaking, I am a much nicer person than I was ten years ago.

My life is very different than the life I imagined for myself when I was eighteen.  Thank heavens!