What You Make of It

Do you ever have that feeling, having finished a really satisfying book, that you are a bit adrift? I recently read Eat, Pray, Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert, and I liked the book so much I wanted to dive right into another book and be as fully immersed. Eat, Pray, Love is an account of the year Liz Gilbert spent traveling through Italy, India, and Indonesia after her marriage ended. It’s full of funny, and sad, and thought-provoking moments.

I thought, when I turned 30 and had no serious man in my life, that I would be perfectly happy working on my career, traveling wherever I wanted, and spoiling my nephew rotten for the rest of my life. I accepted this future quite happily, and when I read Eat, Pray, Love, it sounded like a shortened version of what I had thought my life would be. Shortened, because I could never see any possible way that I could just take off and travel for a year, but it was my vision that I would be the adventurous, eccentric aunt who was always taking off somewhere and coming back with all sorts of interesting stories and unique trinkets.

Life is funny. Two years after I turned 30, I got set up on a Sunday morning coffee date by a woman I worked with. She was hilarious and fun, and she had a son about my age, and she thought we would really get along. Despite some trepidation, I allowed this crazy woman to arrange the Sunday morning date. This crazy woman would later become my mother-in-law, as the “let’s meet for coffee” turned into a full breakfast and gabfest. Yes, her son and I really got along. Six months later, I moved in with him, and six months after that, we were married. Viva came along 18 months later.

So here I am, married, with a kid, on a different kind of adventure. It’s full of funny, and sad, and thought-provoking moments. It’s mine, and I love it.

Although sometimes I wish I had more time to read.