Star Date 2: Milestones.

I recall simplistic days of my youth where great anticipation was pinned and planned for all milestones. Birthdays, Christmas, Confirmations, and anything else that would bring the potential for presents and an assembling of valued individuals.
In my house as a youngster, we even got presents on our siblings birthdays courtesy of my grandmother. This was designed to not make us feel jealous or sad, and it really worked.
As my age progressed, milestones became a mixed blessing. The family holidays in Iowa City became more and more strained as myself and the other kids grew older, gained diversified interests, and learned how to make fun of one another. We all segmented and hung out with specific cousins, gathered as a large group for dinner, and then waited for our fathers to get bored enough to demand that our mothers part each others company.
In Middle School, birthdays started to take a turn for me. In the Pella superstructure of popularity, all of the children would throw 'parties' on their birthdays. These were limited social engagements that included those who had an affinity for bouncing a basketball or the affluence of a Lunchable in the cafeteria. This skewed my perception of milestones for a time, seeing as I was rarely invited to these occasions all though I ran in the same social circles as the other individuals. Additionally, my father was never a huge proponent of me personally having birthday parties, so when this became the in trend, I felt as though I was being denied a birthright of some sort.
In high school, the family occasions became more of hindrance, mainly due to my addictions. At family Christmas and family reunions I was constantly attempting to find ways outdoors and away from the others so I could catch a nicotine buzz. Later I was looking for even greater avoidances. Weekend family reunions got tricky, and I started to segregate myself from the groups completely, usually using a book and a grimace as a hearty defence to any intruders.
Birthdays slightly improved during this time period as an improved social support system provided individuals who would go out of their way to make sure that I had a carton of cigarettes or a birthday cake. I began to look forward to birthdays again, and started taking pride in being an excellent gift giver. There was one occasion where a particular girl I was fond of received sixteen different and equally thoughtful gifts for sixteen days leading up to her birthday. She still broke up with me the day after, but that is a memory for a completely different time (Maybe a post of being taken advantage of unwittingly).
As alcohol entered the picture in the late teen years, birthdays became especially fun, along with all other social occasions away from my parents. Proms, high school sporting events, and most weekend nights became milestones large enough to go out and lose our heads. This made me enjoy them more.
Then I remember the night where milestones quit being fun again. It was during the flood of 2008 and I was back living in the southern part of the state. My dear friend was home from Vermont, and on the eve of his birthday we ascended the barn ladders at his parent's homestead to sit beneath the rafters that had watched us grow old.
Bails of hay were stacked around to provide us company and caution as we sparked lighters on a dilapidated sofa as smoke climbed up and up to encircle the rafters. We spoke in muddled tones about the things that had transpired since he left for America's smaller mountains. He talked of personal discovery, I talked of experience. The hours dropped off our watches and eventually, it was his birthday. He was turning twenty, and we began to talk about the milestone that was hanging from his neck.
He spoke of how now that he was no longer a teenager, the world would be at his doorstep each and every morning. That there was so much more to strive for, so many more expectations. He seemed daunted, prepared but uneasy for the vague things that were about to confront him.
I sat in muted silence as I listened, soaking in the knowledge of a man I both respected and admired. I was hoping to gain some enlightenment, but I had yet to learn that enlightenment is hard to gain from others: it is a gift to be gained from personal experience and often times hardship.
I left in the decaying hours of the graying morning and returned home to slip into a troubled sleep. Two months later I would sit on the same step of manhood, and I felt the milestone weight heavy around my neck. I had similar thoughts to the ones he described that night. I had similar burdens that would weigh on my mind that day.
That is when milestones began to make a difference. They turned from joyous social occasions filled with whiskey slurs and brown eyed girls to the markers they really are in the cemetery of my past. It is easy to forget the day to day, but those days, the ones with added significance, they embed, they stay. They are branded upon my mind in exact details: anything from a floral print tank top to a dinosaur frosted chocolate marble cake.
I quit looking forward to these days, or at least I have tried.
Yesterday I passed another significant milestone: a six month anniversary. This is something I have not accomplished in years, and will hopefully never accomplish again. All week it was a pleasant reminder that I had someone who loves me, and is in turn loved by me. The occasion served as a handy conversation stimulant in the preceding day, but once the calender turned, it took on the heavy thoughts that I now expect from milestones.
It is as if I perch upon these grave markers of my past and look back, hand flattened against my forehead to shade my eyes, squinting through the glare of time and trial to appraise what has transpired.
I saw a quiet girl in a journalism class that wore yellow sweatpants and quietly lamented me for breaking the heart of her friend. I saw the same girl go on an unfortunate date with another man, a date that made me jealous enough to want her for myself. I saw those first few conversations where we were both nervous, struggling to maintain eye contact. Then I saw that eye contact grow, the butterflies stay, and a first date in my kitchen baking cookies that even the cookie monster wouldn't have wanted to eat. I recalled the first few weeks, where I was unsure. The time period where I usually would just abandon girls out of a fear of commitment, avoiding phone calls and making drunk proclamations from red stained lips.
Then I saw how she got me past that. How she didn't give up. What she did, what I asked of her, and how she rose to every challenge I presented for her.
I saw a list of a hundred and one date activities, and the way it became stained with pink highlighter as we worked our way through them one by one. I remembered a move to Britt, and a move back. I saw the time she dropped her fork and walked across the table to hold my head in her hands as I wept for my personal dignity.
I saw the uneasy end of summer, and the dawning of the fall. The distance ripped at my heart as she journeyed off to school. The way we have made it through. The way we will always make it through.
Yesterday dawned my six month anniversary, a milestone that to some is significant, to others is meaningless. It plagued me all morning from between my sips of coffee as I pondered where the future will take us. It made me uneasy, the same feeling I had on the eve of my twentieth birthday. Then, I looked back and came to the realization that: anywhere I am going from here on out, I will never be alone. That simple truth provided me comfort. I will always have a place to lay my head, I will always have a hand to hold.

I love you darling,
I really do.
Always and forever.