When I was seventeen, my friend Lisa and I spent hours discussing twenty-seven.  We loved imagining the lives we would have in ten years’ time.  When we were twenty-seven, we thought, we’d have some things figured out, we’d be the best version of ourselves.  

I suspected that at twenty-seven I’d be living in Charleston, South Carolina, working as a curator at an art museum, married to my intellectual family-man husband (who I’d married at twenty-five), and pregnant with our first child–a girl.  We’d go to parties–gallery openings–and drink champagne with our young artsy friends.  We’d live in the city but by the beach, in the carriage house behind an old sprawling southern mansion.  We’d sit on the porch and drink mint juleps (not that I knew what a mint julep was).

Today is my last official day of my twenty-seventh year, and I think the close of such a momentous year deserves a moment of reflection.  Twenty-seven was the year of powder skiing, and noticing creases that don’t quite go away when I stop smiling, and setting up a home in what my sister calls “the love nest.” It’s not quite what I envisioned for myself.  At seventeen, having lived my whole life in one small town in southwestern Virginia, I could hardly imagine a life outside the American South, much less outside the country.  And perhaps you noticed that alcohol as status symbol plays a major role in my fantasies, though who drinks a mint julep I don’t know (my one attempt at making some went terribly awry when, in the absence of simple syrup, we tried to sweeten it with maple syrup–it goes without saying this did not take place in the South).  Now I’m a beer girl, something my seventeen year old self might find a little disenchanting.  And I’m no where near ready to start a family, though to keep things in perspective, you should know that in southwestern Virginia twenty-seven is pretty late in the procreation game.  At seventeen I’d never tasted tofu or seen Thai food, but, to perpetuate certain Appalachian stereotypes, I had been driving a tractor for at least six years.

Still, I don’t think I’d look like a stranger to my seventeen year old self.  I was ready to get out of my home town and I think she’d be pleased to know how far I’ve taken it.  And even though I’m not a curator, a writer-slash-professor is a pretty great runner-up.  My rock climbing and sushi eating habits, however, would’ve seemed awfully bold to her.  

Mainly, though, I think she’d be a little worried to hear how un-adult twenty-seven can feel at times.  As Lisa wrote in an e-mail last year, “I thought I would be more tied down or closer to having it figured out or a least closer to looking like an adult.”  Seventeen year old Mandy would be unimpressed by my craigslist futon (we all know twenty-seven year olds invest in proper sofas) and  the fact that I still wear my scruffy yellow Chucks.  But despite the charms of the fantasy, I don’t think I’d fit into the life she imagined for me.  This life is richer than her fantasy, full of experiences (salmon sashimi, for example) that are beyond the borders of her map.  Justin says I see too many limits, that I make arbitrary rules about what I can’t do (like ride my bike in the rain or climb 5.11 or ski in -15C), but I prefer to think of it as easing into a world that was once beyond my conception. I eat more chocolate chip cookies and make more mistakes than I did at seventeen.  I’m no longer afraid of A minuses, but that’s an easy thing to say when you’re the one with the pen in your hand.  In one way, though, twenty-seven has been what I expected: I feel at home in the life I’ve made for myself. Fantasizing about that feeling, about a life I fit into, was what made the whole exercise so appealing in the first place.  I don’t know what I imagined I’d become after twenty-seven, but, starting tomorrow, I’m looking forward to finding out.

(twenty-seven year old’s shoes)

 

(in the city but by the beach–on a different coast)