Gram knows. We all know. There’s no way to turn back this illness or to make it better. Most times, the lungs are the last area to deteriorate. My grandmother has always been special, and this distinction continues on with her during this monster of a disease. It’s attacked the lungs first and with a vengenence. For her to come home, she will need a trach. She can’t go for more than 5 minutes without the BiPAP.

We’re pretty sure that Gram wouldn’t want live this way, even with her brain still strong and capable.

It hurts. A lot. It’s so devastating. It’s so sad. I want to find ways to be positive and hopeful. I want to dwell on the happy times and the 30-some years that she’s been in my life. But it’s really, really, really difficult.

When I was a junior in high school, up until my sophomore year or so of college, I wanted to grow up to be a one-woman Woodward and Bernstein.

Getting the big scoops; talking to secret sources in code; writing the front-age, history-changing story; winning a Pulitzer or two.

Woodward and Bernstein began covering Watergate at ages 29 and 28, respectively.

I never realized they were so young at the time. Not even when I read “All the President’s Men” in high school or watched the movie a few years later.

Maybe I just didn’t notice the age because, as a 17-year-old, 29 just seemed so old and far away. And now, at 31,  it just seems so young.

One of my best friends from high school lives just mere miles away from me here in DC suburb land. He’s lived here longer than I have and I have seen him only two times.

Yesterday was No 2.

I was cleaning through my personal email inbox last week and found a conversation we had months ago. On a whim, I wrote to him, saying it’s ridiculous we don’t see each other enough, we really need to get together.

So we were quick to make plans and had lunch together yesterday. Impromptu lunches are so much easier now that I work in DC, just steps from the red line. It was a little surreal because most of my friends now are ones whom I’ve made in the past year or two, not people who have known me for nearly half my life. (We met in ninth grade, so yeah, that’d be half of my 3o years of life. Amazing.) We chatted over a plate of grilled chicken for me and fish and chips for him. I gave him the gossip I knew about our friends “back home,” and we talked about his foray into becoming a homeowner, his wife, his future plans.

It was great to see him again, especially since we had many tumultuous times younger (According to him, I am banned from ever visiting the state of Michigan again. This was after Northwestern football beat Michigan in 1995. He didn’t like that I was excited for our surprising victory.) We’re all grown up now. Or at least he seems to be. He’s got a house, two dogs, a wife, and a law degree. I have an apartment, a roommate, a wacky relationship, a cat still vacationing with my grandparents, and a kickball league. But one day, maybe I’ll grow up too. I guess there’s no rush.

The true friends are the ones whom you can not hear from in a very long time, and when you meet up again, it feels like you never parted ways. He is definitely that kind of friend.

In less than a week, I reach the biggest birthday milestone since turning 25. The big 3-0. Entering decade four. I’m no longer able to say I’m going through my quarter-life crisis. It’s now the one-third life crisis.

Actually, it’s not all that bad. I fretted about it two years ago, but now, it seems like any other approaching birthday. Maybe this is because I have plenty of friends who are older and enough that are younger (who don’t think it’s so uncool to hang with a 30-something).

I never really had any grand vision for what my life would be like at 30. I never envisioned or cared much about owning my own place, although it’s now something I think more about. I still don’t quite know what I want to be when I grow up, but i seem to be slowly cementing my path in communications of some type. Is it too late to be a marine biologist or an urban redevelopment planner?

But instead of future tripping and thinking of all I haven’t done, let’s recap some great and favorite birthday moments. I’ll preface by saying most of my childhood birthdays were fun. As a little girl, my family let me alternate having parties with taking friends out to dinner. Even school-grade years were birthdays. Odd years were dinnners.

• Kindergarten (age 6) – McDonald’s. Paper party hats, cake and the indoor carousel – standard-issue kids’ party.
• Grade 1 (age 7) – Dinner at Red Bull Inn with Kelly Brinker. I wore a pink frilly dress. Aw yeah.
• Grade 2 (age 8 ) – Party at Major Magic’s (like a Chuck e Cheese). So happy because Tim Henry, my second grade crush, came. He gave me barettes that his mom crocheted. Tim did not actually like me though. I got over it.
• Grade 3 (age 9) – Dinner at Ground Round with Kelly. Kids paid what they weigh! My meal cost 78 cents.
• Grade 4 (age 10) – My first all-girls slumber party. I was the last to fall asleep. The next morning, we had off school (first day of deer hunting season is a school holiday in Pennsylvania) so we all decorated my family’s Christmas tree. Wow. We were dorks.
• Grade 5 (age 11) – Dinner at Red Lobster with Kelly and Kristen Hollis. I was allowed to bring a second friend this time. And yes, Red Lobster is a classy place.
• Grade 6 (age 12) – I have no idea. I guess I stopped having parties.
• Grade 7 – 10 – I must’ve blocked out the middle school/early school years because I have no memories of what I did.
• Grade 11 (age 17) – Now, this one I remember. I can do a whole post on my 17th birthday, a surprise all-night bowling party. Perhaps I’ll save that story for tomorrow. My friends tricked me into going to a bowling alley, and we partied all night with pop and pizza and bowling.
• Age 18 – A small gathering at my house. We hit a pinata in my backyard. It was a last-minute thing.
• Age 19 – College freshman year. Soon-to-be boyfriend took me to dinner for pizza at Carmen’s, the best Chicago-style pizza in Evanston. I think it was the first time a guy paid for me for dinner. Looking back on it, I guess it was a date.
• Age 20- Boyfriend organized a surprise party in his suite. Best gift was opening a bottle of champagne and sharing with everyone there.
• Age 21 – Went to lunch with a group of friends, all underage. So I ordered Stir Fire Grill’s version of a mai tai and then stealthily passed it around. Yes, I was proudly carded. I had a final until 9 that night, so the later celebration consisted of simply having a few snakebites at Tommy Nevin’s Irish Pub with a few sorority sisters.
• Age 22-28 were nothing exciting. Dinner or drinks with some friends or working all day and too tired to do anything.
• Age 29 – FUN. I organized a bar crawl through Georgetown. At each bar, I got to make a birthday wish, things like my party starting a conga line or someone finding me a boy from Pittsburgh to buy me a shot. Really, it was a super fun birthday. Probably should’ve been saved for the 30th. But definitely a fitting last year of the 20s.

This year, I’m being taken out to dinner somwhere in Bethesda but I have no idea where. I’m not being told. Then I’m going dancing with the boy. I’m a little nervous because I don’t like not having control of things like this. I want the occassion to be on the list of birthdays I remember 20 years from now, not the ones that I can’t remember, like ages 13-16. The boy insists this wil be one to remember. And he’s a pretty good planner of fun times, so I trust him. But as one who inherited the unnecessary worry wart gene, I can’t help but fret just a little.

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