20 years to the date!

I'm bad at remembering dates. Like, really bad. :-)

Anniversaries, birthdays - you name it, it tend to forget it. 

So it's always amused me that of one of the few dates that I do remember is the one that I landed in the United States -  Sep 14, 2000. 

I wouldn't have remembered the date under most circumstances, but a few years after I got here my dad, who was actually pretty good with dates once remarked that Sep 14, 1975 was the date he and my mother landed in Tanzania from India for the very first time. He would then go on to build most of his later career in Africa, and he thought it was a remarkable coincidence that 25 years later his son would land in the United States on the exact same date. Somehow that conversation has always stuck with me, and since then this particular date.  

Exactly 20 years ago, my cousin picked me up from the airport and a couple of days later dropped me off to grad school. The photograph is from a few months later that Fall quarter. I expected to live in the United States a long time when I got here, but that was about it. I was still too young and too unsure of what that would mean and of what my life would be like. I'm still quite unsure, just no longer young.

 

Dates don't mean much - except when they are natural markers that encourage you to look back, and to look forward. Twenty years feels like an insanely long time, but looking back at that photograph it doesn't really feel that long ago at all. 

So today, I found myself looking back a lot - remembering, reflecting, feeling very lucky, feeling some regret - but mostly just being very grateful for the life I've had here so far. I've spent just under half my life in this country, and it's where I've made most of my memories and where I've put down roots with my family. 

It also had me thinking a lot about what I want the next twenty years to be like. This time I have slightly more of clue than I did twenty years ago, but only slightly :-)

With all the ups and downs that will inevitably transpire, here's hoping to making the next twenty as meaningful - no, even more meaningful - than the last twenty.