Happy birthday to me! I am now officially part of the “55 and older” cohort, which both simplifies and diminishes the experience of no longer being young here in the 21st century.

30 years ago, as of this post, I was in Saint Petersburg, Russia, celebrating my birthday with friends and classmates in the restaurant of the Hotel Rus. The above photos is from that trip, when we visited the prison where Dostoevsky was held just prior to his mock execution. I am just to the right of the window, with glasses, shaggy brown hair, and a black shirt.

This trip, more than anything else at that time, seemed to be the dividing line between my young life and my adult life. I still pull out the photos once in a while, and I still have the dozens of books, all in Russian, which I picked up on that trip. Can I read them? Not really. Not any more. My Russian is almost nonexistent at this point. Had I time and energy to do so, I would start learning the language again. I know just enough Russian to be able to pick out the line from The Master and Margarita which became my first tattoo.

If my fifty-third year was one of re-emergence, this past year was one of re-connection. I have made contact with a number of people I have not seen in years or decades. It has been a wonderful experience, and from what I have seen of the next several months, is a process which is likely to continue for quite some time. I have heard it said that as we get older it becomes progressively harder to make new friends. This may be true, but as we get older, if we are lucky, we have more and more old friends with whom we can both share old memories and make new ones.

And now, off to work. Only ten more years to go until I retire, and I am counting the minutes.

(If you are looking for my IWSG post for June, it is here.)