Scene: Harriet�s room. AJ is lying on the floor feeling sick, but not so sick that he can�t tell jokes.

AJ: Mommy, I�ve got a joke for you.

Harriet: Lay it on me.

AJ: What does that mean, Mommy?

Harriet: It means tell me your joke.

AJ: Oh. OK. Why couldn�t the eleven-year-old go to the pirate movie?

Harriet: I don�t know. Why?

AJ: Because it was rated YARRR!

* * * * *

I�m always up for a little pirate humor.

fairlywell has been discussing the question of whether or not you have a decade, as in one that is where you are at your best. �What about you?,� she asks. �Do you think you�ve had *your decade* yet? Are you in it now? Did you have it already, and what then?�

I remember when I was in college that I would occasionally meet friends of my parents or others of an older generation (the generation, in fact, that I find myself in now � my mom was exactly my age when I was a freshman in college � a fact I find most alarming. But that�s what happens when you�re a teenaged bride.) and would be disturbed about how they always said things like �enjoy it. These are the best years of your life.� I found it depressing. Are all these people really looking at the best years of their lives in the past tense? How can they live with themselves? How do they get up in the morning?

I no longer believe in having �my decade� or even �my year.� Each age has had different challenges and benefits, different events that govern it. I think my twenties were the hardest for me. There were so many things to figure out. I had to figure out how to enact turmoil. But they were also the most varied and daring. I wouldn�t change them for the world, even as I know I don�t have the energy to go back there.

I�m now at the end of my thirties. In a little over six months, I will have entered my fifth decade. I�m trying not to think about that one too hard.

The thirties were the decade where I�ve felt like I�ve finally grown into my skin. I feel like myself now. Not exactly more confident, but more at ease with my neuroses. I got married in my thirties. I had AJ in my thirties. I went back to grad school in my thirties. The thirties was all about resolving the crisis with which my twenties ended. My thirties were a new leaf.

The thing about your decades is that you carry all of them with you as you go. So your best, your worst, they�re all you, they�re all now.

I have a friend. She�s nearly a decade older than I, but I�d always thought she was much younger. She has a theory that everyone has a right age, a mental age, a true age, an age that when they reach it, that�s where they stay. They spend their life up to that point feeling older than their peers. They spend the years afterwards feeling younger. I think there may be something to that. Somewhere in my thirties, I made the switch. I moved from feeling too old to feeling too young. It was liberating. But it also made me call into question my ability to see myself with any kind of objectivity and honesty.

But I have to believe, if only in a personal fantasy, that the best decades are yet to come. Because otherwise, what�s the point? How can�t we believe the best is yet to come? And why shouldn�t we? Because we have decades of history, of experience, of knowledge behind us.

So how to celebrate the next decade? I�m not sure. Do I want to throw a huge party? Do I want to get together with old friends? Do I want to meet new ones? Do I want to hide in my closet in the fetal position? Do I want to bungee jump or get a tattoo or buy a fast car? I�ve got a few months before I have to figure it out. In the mean time, many more things will happen. I will give lectures and hopefully finish my dissertation. I will see AJ finish kindergarten and my friend L. get married. I will count a few more wrinkles around my eyes. I will learn to hold a handstand a little longer. I will write letters to my congressman that will be ignored. I will play fiddle with friends while drinking beer. I will watch my husband sleep. I will hug AJ every morning. I will lose my car keys. I will cook meals. I will dance in the shower. I will listen to more pirate jokes. And I plan on enjoying every minute of it.

[Third entry today. Because apparently I just can�t shut up.]

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