*cough, cough*

Getting pretty dusty around here. I'm going to skip the hangdog excuses and move right onto the rest of it. Life, that is. It happens, we all know that, right?

I turned thirty last month, I was pretty happy about it.

With your permission, let's explore age a little bit. Aside from the sobering development that I am now, for the first time in my life, older than I actually feel (and I hear things will stay this way in perpetuity), I don't think much about my age. What I have started to ponder are the ages; generations, to be precise. Suddenly we can't make it through a news cycle or publication without someone declaiming the ills of my generation -- the Millennials. Our new sins, our inventive lack of morals, our utter fecklessness, our incomprehensibly public lives, the hopeless futures we are ascending to. Few and quiet are our supporters, Gen-Xers, in particular (our bullish big brother), are clarion in their disgust and self-righteousness. Does anyone else think this ironic? Just as the aged laugh indulgently at the young and the way they think they invented ideals and sex and art, can we take a moment to laugh at the aging and the way they think they invented work ethic, upright values and civic-minded stability? The older I get, the more I conclude that people are people, always have been, and always will be. The rest is just paint -- the changes in fashion, technology, culture, even paradigms. Our is to scoff at our elders when we are young (and think that we invented ideals and sex and art), and then be deliciously and smugly scandalized by youth in our turn.

There is a lot of growing up happening around me. A boy who is on the cusp of seven years, tall as a small pony and with an insatiable appetite for experience and answers and information that is only matched by his sister, on the cusp of seventeen months. It is delightful how parallel their paths are, and yet how very different. They are both discovering a new realm of language, horizons of expression, refinement in physicality and pushing to find the edge of their worlds. They are so well-suited to each other, then, to be on this journey, and have started to single out their own relationship that is like no other -- the sibling. Which calls for another collage, though alas with only one child; the boy is wilier these days.

There are many more things coming down the pike to get excited about and they deserve a bit of gussying up before they arrive. I will be back, and I'll likely continue to tweak the face of this creature for a while, too, it was high time for a new look.