The “Big Three Oh” – Something To Dread Or Embrace?

by Michelle Dee
Originally Published via PD, November 24, 2010

In life you learn many lessons.  Some are just mere short term experience, and others can take years. One in particular I had to learn was that the big three-oh (turning 30) did not mean the end of my youth, fun in life, or hope. I had to go on quite a long journey to figure this lesson out, though.

One day, I was riding down Interstate 64, sitting in the back seat of a raspberry colored 96 Chevy Cavalier.  My mother was in the passenger seat and my step-father was driving. I was seventeen years-old.  I had always teased my mother, who was thirty-seven  at the time, about being old.  This was one of those times. I mentioned that there was nothing to look forward to after thirty except retirement, and then sometimes I would jokingly add, “unless you want to run for President at thirty-five”.  This particular time, though, my mother turned and said to me, “You know I had some of the best times in my life after I turned thirty.”

Fast forward twelve years.  It was a cold night in late January 2008.  My family was sound asleep and my kittens were thumping about on my new hardwood laminate floors.  I lay in bed thinking “Oh my, I am twenty nine.  This is the end of my youth!”