another year, another anniversary

Happy 2011! I hope everyone had a lovely and safe holidays, no doubt filled with health-conscious eating and responsible drinking of moderately-alcoholic beverages.

A few days ago, I endured my quarter-century milestone. Yes, I am now 25. Or, as Tyler so tactfully put it, "You're now half-way to your mid-life crisis!" THANKS BUDDY, so nice of you to remind me that I'm officially now in my mid-twenties and have yet to do anything with my life!

I remember in high school and college where 25 seemed so unbearably...old. 25 meant stable 9-to-5 and reeked of babies and unkempt husbands. But from this perspective, 25 hardly seems like anything at all. While I am gainfully employed, my ideal career is still in very fledgling stages, and I'm zero percent married nor with child (thank goodness).

Speaking of marriages, today is the 26th anniversary of my parents' marriages, as well as Elleen's parents and Carolyn's parents. What are the odds, right, that three couples from Taiwan who got married on the exact same day would all eventually move within like 20 miles from each other? They've been married longer than I've been alive. In one sense, it's like "Well, that's quite a stretch of time, I mean, it's longer than my whole life has been." In another, it's like "But yet, I feel like it's no time at all, as I've apparently done very little thus far."

I wonder if they even think about their marriage as an accomplishment, or if it's such a part of them by now that it's nothing really to think about. It's just another given thing in life, like breathing or blinking or buying shampoo that you don't need. I suspect that all the relationship theories and divisions of labor and all of the idealistic notions that single people my age talk about, all of that goes out the window when you finally get married for real. Nothing's perfect and nothing's predictable, right? All I hope is that one day I'll be as lucky as they are to be a part of something that feels as natural as breathing. And I hope our kids are cute. And I hope we're happy, too.