Ten years ago, I was walking across my college campus on a humid, golden-lit evening. My good friend, still stuck at age 19, asked how I felt about my birthday. I pulled in a deep breath and smiled. “I love it! I’m so excited not to be a teenager anymore.”  Twenty was the age of promise, the next decade hinting at monumental moments like degrees and engagement rings, careers and new friendships, international travel. Experiences that happen for the first time only one time.  During a childhood spent straining for independence, I imagined life on my own. As an adult, before the inevitable “settling down,” I would get a historic but appropriately renovated apartment in a big city’s downtown. I’d cook gourmet dinners with friends and afterwards sit on my balcony alone to watch city lights and read good literature. I’d have a real writing career, definitely a dog, and maybe a roommate depending on current inflation.  I would be self-sufficient, confident, breezy but rooted, always learning, always growing. I would stop wearing basketball shorts and my sisters’ hand-me-down clothes and develop an actual sense of style. I might attempt heels and a matching purse. Ten years later, this morning […]

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