The last week in April, I went home to Detroit. It was the best trip home I've made since moving to San Francisco over two years ago now.
I took my boyfriend with me. I introduced him to my family and friends. I'd been kind of worried about doing that. My mother, after all, has a habit of forming attachments to the men in my life (hell -- not just the men: EVERYONE in my life). I knew she still missed my ex badly enough after two years, and I was about to supply her with a fresh target.
But there were no glitches in the introductions. Everyone welcomed him with open arms -- from my immediate family to family friends and neighbors, from old high school pals to former coworkers.
I was worried that he wouldn't quite "get" the Midwest, full of classic rock lovers and people who've never had real Mexican food, where everyone cares more about professional sports than progressive music and they still smoke in bars. AND restaurants. He couldn't get it because he's from California. And people from the West Coast don't get us people from the heartland. Even if I'm in love with them. Sorry -- they just never really can.
But he got it. And he liked it. So much that he nicknamed Michigan "Mittenshark" (it's a mitten, after all, topped by a shark) and kept asking when we could go back as soon as we got home to San Francisco.
He drank cheap macrobrew beer in a smoky bar with my friends...
And danced to a band at my friend's wedding covering Bon Jovi...
And urban spelunked in an abandoned factory on the riverfront...
And... Coached the photographer taking our family photos and drove through a UAW strike and honked for the strikers even though he didn't know what they were striking about and drank beer with a lineman on Michigan Avenue in Corktown.
This person that I thought could never understand the place I came from became the reason I actually understood it better than I had in years. He made me experience Detroit with my eyes open wider than ever before.
So I came back to San Francisco and the homesickness and general out-of-sorts-ness I'd been feeling lately was just gone. I was cured. I no longer had anything to feel sorry or wonky about, because here I was: I had a beautiful new home, and a beautiful old home, and I could travel between them and be happy in either place. And my problems from the old home and the old life wouldn't follow me to the new one, but they hadn't poisoned the old one so much so that I couldn't go back there and enjoy it anymore, either. It didn't have to be dead to me.
I was still Lisa from Detroit, with friends and a family there and places to go to that I loved and a past I could treasure and revisit. But I was not doing it or them any disrespect by loving the life I'd worked for here.
And so I started the month of May -- the last month of my 20s -- feeling very empowered. Feeling like I knew who I was, where I belonged, and what I wanted. I righted some difficult situations at my workplace and racked up some accolades. I cut off my hair. I crossed a lot of things off my to-do list. And then, as the month closed, I...
Turned 30.
Something I'd always worried about in the past, but when it arrived, it just arrived. I was just fine. It just washed over me, and I went from a 20-something to a 30-something. I had a moment, lying there in bed on the morning of June 2, thinking back to my 20th birthday and realizing I couldn't remember it, and I began to feel a little overwhelmed by the quantity of my life, but more so than that, I just felt proud at all I had accomplished.
You know -- statistics. Like...
I've lived in two countries and three states...
I've traveled to 13 countries...
I've loved three excellent men...
I've buried one parent and two grandparents...
I've beat the diagnosis of a life-altering illness...
I've been financially self-sustaining since I was 18 years old...
I've been the first to create work in my field to critical acclaim...
All things that have amounted to a lot of life experience.
All before the age of 30.
And I got up and out of bed and walked three miles to Chinatown for lunch at my favorite vegan restaurant.
So, for my 30s, I've decided to go easier on myself. I think this is the end of my Saturn Return, and so far, I anticipate smooth sailing ahead...
The Saturn return is a regular astronomical occurrence relevant to the practice of astrology which occurs in a person's life at approximately 27–30 years of age and again around the age of 58–60, with the third and usually final occurrence around 86-88. The planet Saturn takes approximately 29.5 years to orbit the Sun; when it returns to the exact degree along the ecliptic it occupied at the time of a person's birth this is referred to as their "Saturn Return".
Saturn is symbolically/astrologically associated with time, challenge, fear, doubt, confusion, difficulty, seriousness, heaviness, unwanted burdens and hard lessons, among other more positive things such as structure, significance, accomplishment, reflection, power, prestige, maturity, responsibility and order – this is why astrologers believe that the thirtieth birthday is such a major rite of passage and is considered by many astrologers to mark the "true beginning" of adulthood, self-evaluation, independence, responsibility, ambition, and full maturation."
You got me at 27, Saturn, giving me MS on my birthday. But I have to admit, so far, my 30th year looks like a pretty good make-up call...
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