Well it looks like I’m passing through another year closer to that ripe old age of 30. This year has been a pretty good year with a trip to Rome, Disney, Denver, and a few other assorted places. Mainly this birthday will be hopefully not too uneventful aside from my dad’s back surgery. Looking back its stunning to think that I was in my early twenties trying to figure out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, and now I’m in my last year of my twenties doing it, but still saying… “there has to be more”. Anyway, another year, another foot closer to the grave

That’s right, our fearless leader is one more long, lonely step closer to the grave (though by technicality of date, I’m still closer by almost two months). Congrats, big guy.

Out.

I guess you could say every major life change begins at birth. Mine is no different, I was born on my mothers birthday - Halloween. Unfortunately, my memory of this birthday is missing and I only vaguely remember my childhood and the major life changes that occurred early on.

What defines a major life change? A major life change is a turning point in your life. Where you are going along just fine and then suddenly at this “X-marks-the-spot,” you start doing something completely different.

My first turning point was on my 10th birthday. Previously my birthdays had been parties and friends and cakes and pumpkin ice cream. Then we’d always always break out to go trick-or-treating in the neighborhood. It was a yearly thing that I grew to enjoy. I saw some of the kids I went trick-or-treating with only once a year. But this birthday was different. There were no friends, there were no cakes, there were no trick-or-treats. There was “a limited time only” Arby’s Polor Swirl in a plastic mug, a Large Big Roast Beef Sandwich and a small fry.

My mom was trying to hold everything together as we had just come from the hospital where her father was. You see, I spent most of my 5th grade year in California where my grandfather was slowly going into alzheimers and congestive heart failure, among other things. This time he was in the hospital for the doctors to stick a 12″ needle into his chest and drain out the fluid that was building up in his lungs. No sedative. We were both amazed that he just looked at us with no pain whatsoever. A trait in our family apparently.

“I don’t know what to do,” she said. As she sipped her Pumpkin Polar Swirl. “I’m sorry that we didn’t have a real birthday for you or I this Halloween.”

“It’s okay,” I said, “It’s just a day in time. We chose to come out here and take care of him.”

My mom held back her tears.

It was at that point that I realized I was no longer going to have the same life, the same types of things happening. I had to grow up and see the world no longer as a child, but as an adult. See things like, “life will kick you when you are down.”

Days later, on November 9th, 1989 the Berlin Wall came down and marked the ending of the Cold War. A war that myself and my friends had grown up and known . We had grown up knowing only one true enemy. We played American and Russian spy games with plastic guns and walkie talkies in our back yards. Those dastardly Russians. Now the US had no other Super Power to butt heads with. Things would forever be different.

Not too much longer after that, we moved my grandfather back to Louisiana with us and I finished out the rest of my school year there. My summer was marked with a fun-filled trip with my other grandparents and cousins to New Mexico, where I tried to forget that I had grown up; I tried to go back to just being a kid. I almost succeeded, but something had changed. Something always changes when you watch your loved ones slowly wither away in front of you. My grandfather forgot who I am, where he was. etc. Over the course of the next 3 1/2 years, my grandfather lived with us until his death in my freshman year of high school.

His death marked another small turning point in my life and in my mom’s life as well. The next four years I managed to make a ton of friends, enjoy high school, learn about getting a job and getting a driver’s lisence, and take road trips with my best buds: Magik, Jeff, Justin, Cheesemoo, and Freeloader. And finally graduate into the real world, where another major turning point awaited me. And that one, I’ll save for another day.