Remembering Youth While Getting Older

Well, it's official.  I turn 35 tomorrow.  For some reason, this one is bothering me.  The last one that bothered me this badly was 27.  I can't tell you why that one bothered me, it was such an odd number.  I remember that I was feeling restless in my life.  And maybe that is why... and maybe that is why this one is bothering me.  Because once again, I am restless.  I am 110 days from graduation.  190 days from the bar exam.  Approximately 280 days from the bar results being released and me (hopefully) celebrating passing and starting the next phase in my life.

Looking back, I don't think this is where I thought I would be at 35.  Not when I was a kid for sure.  And definitely not when I was 18 or 19 years old.  I felt like I was flying through the world, accelerating to places and surely by this time I would be somewhere great.  And so the hard reality is that my own life choices slowed me down.  I know we all have our own place we are supposed to be, and I definitely feel like I am heading towards that place, but this slap in the face with another birthday is just a reminder that I am arriving to that place much later than I thought I would.  And for a person like me - who is always racing to the next goal marker - arriving late is not something I am a big fan of.

So, instead of being all weepy about getting another year older, I thought I would post a blog I have been meaning to post for about a month.  I missed posting a few things, and I may go back and write about them later, but for now I am going to share a Christmas gift I received with you.

As a child, I remember when we would take the family vacation to Tennessee and stop along the way for food and especially as we visited our favorite restaurants in Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg... there was always a bottle of Tabasco around and when I was really young, those bottles had the city of New Iberia, Louisiana printed on the label and it was my dad's favorite thing to point out to our waitress "That's where we are from!" It was like we were famous!  As famous as anyone from New Iberia, LA could be, that is.  Then, sometime as I entered the teenage years, the labels on those bottles changed to say "Avery Island, Louisiana" which was not far from where I grew up, but not the same thing.  As a kid, it didn't really bother me that much, but as an adult I sort of went on a mission to find some memorabilia with the New Iberia stamp on it.  I was hoping to find an old Tabasco bottle or maybe a poster that I could frame.

I have looked around on a few different occasions and never had much luck finding anything for sale.  Which is why I was very surprised when I opened one of my Christmas gifts from Nick to find this:

It's a pewter Tabasco bottle holder.  It holds the larger Tabasco bottles and right there it is!  New Iberia, LA!!  It was such a small reminder of my childhood that I love.  Something unique that reminds me of happy memories from when I was a kid.  Something that reminds me that I have been blessed in my life and that I still am - to have someone to seek out a gift like this for me.

So, to good memories of the past, not fretting over the present, and anxiously awaiting the future...

Cheers my friends!