Decades

I can’t believe I’m at the age where I can measure things in decades. I’ve been playing the piano for three decades. I’ve known my two dearest friends for two decades. And it’s officially been one decade since I had a boyfriend serious enough that I thought I’d marry.

If you’re not familiar with The Writer’s Almanac, it has a great database for poetry. Tonight, just for giggles, I checked out the poem that was posted on July 24, 2000. It was my birthday, and a month earlier, I initiated The Conversation with the aforementioned boyfriend, in which I told him I was no longer content to wait. He did not want to commit, so we parted ways…amicably, until a week after my birthday, he wanted to “talk.” I started the conversation hopeful; it ended much the way I assume nuclear war does–toxic waste everywhere and no hope of ever seeing the sun shine again.

(Hyperbole is a poetic device, I know, but it was a fairly epic conversation.)

I am so glad I didn’t know about The Writer’s Almanac back then, because the poem for my 27th birthday was this one..

Hilarious. The irony present in my life is ridiculous.