In the year 2000, I was a wide-eyed, naïve high school graduate looking forward to the most intimidating chapter of my sheltered little life: college. Back then, there was no question that in ten years I would be very haute journalist—living in my fashionable New York City apartment, traveling the world (undoubtedly in Jimmy Choos), sipping vodka martinis and rubbing elbows with celebrities. It was all going to be VERY Sex and the City.
Then I blinked, and a decade passed.
The last ten years have been an essential journey for me, scattered with moments that would ultimately have a profound influence on my life today.
Let’s go back to 2000, when I graduated from high school, traipsed off to University of Maryland and met the group of girls who would soon become my best friends; girls who are still so close to my heart despite living hundreds (and some THOUSANDS) of miles away. I love them, I respect them and I have learned so much from them.
In the following year, September would prove to be one of the most frightening times of my life. Living just outside the nation’s capital, we feared for our safety during the chaotic events that unfolded on September 11, 2001. I will never forget the precise moment that I heard the words
“Washington DC has been bombed”. Or, an hour later, when I watched as two skyscrapers crumbled to the ground. May God be with everyone who lost their life that horrible day.
Shockingly, what had been the most terrifying minutes of my life to date would be replaced just two weeks later. Too many nights I have relived the same nightmare; the sky darkening to a putrid shade of green, the people far below my window running, the debris flying, the little trees buckling, my heart pounding, my legs racing down seven flights of stairs, the lights darkening, the glass shattering, the wind roaring, the students screaming and worst of all, knowing that
that thing is right outside and that
this might be the end. On September 24, 2001, this devastating tornado tore through our already rattled College Park campus, taking the lives of two students, totaling my car and leaving an unbelievable path of destruction. An intense fear of thunderstorms haunts me to this day.
This pattern of disturbing events continued just over a year later, when we awoke to the news that several people had been gunned down in surrounding areas while going about their daily tasks like pumping gas and shopping. It was October of 2002 and for the next three weeks the DC Sniper terrorized the entire metro area. Thirteen people were shot and ten of them died before the sniper was captured. He was executed in November of 2009.
On a more uplifting note, 2002 was also the year that my heart melted for a fluffy white puppy with big brown eyes. I took her home and named her Aspen; she was a ray of light on even the darkest days. For a while, it would be just the two of us, but this was the beginning of what would become my own family.
And let's not forget, the Terps men's basketball team won the National Championship in 2002!
Aspen and I packed up and moved to Baltimore in 2004, a carefree, impulsive time in a booming economy; a period highlighted by singlehood and tour bus parties but lacking in direction and motivation—in retrospect, this was the forcible transition to my adult life.
On a steaming hot July afternoon in 2006, I went to a friend’s birthday party and (MUCH to my surprise) met the man who would become my husband. He (warily) “adopted” Aspen as his own and suddenly the clan had grown to three. Pete and I were blissfully engaged on October 31, 2007.
In an unexpected turn of events, on March 22, 2008 (my birthday), I went out to get a chicken salad sandwich and came back with the most beautiful Siberian Husky puppy I had ever seen. The addition of silly, sweet Juno to the family has brought us so much fun and laughter ever since. What did we ever do without her?
Later that year, in July of 2008, Pete and I were married in a beautiful ceremony on Grand Bahama Island in front of 65 friends and family members. It was the beginning of a new, exciting chapter for both of us.
Six months later, in January 2009, amid a mortgage meltdown and global financial crisis, we signed the contract for our very first home.
Two days after that, two pink lines revealed that our family of four would soon grow to five.
In September of 2009, I became a mother to a sweet little boy named Luke. This single moment diminishes everything I have ever accomplished or have ever done in my life—he is my greatest achievement. I left my job to stay home with him and thus began an amazing new chapter of my life.
So, here we are.
I’m not the jet-setting journalist I once thought I would be. But, I’m writing! I have my martini, my Jimmy Choos, a warm home, a loving husband, two amazing dogs and the most incredible little boy I have ever met.
And I
never could have dreamt of this life, because I never knew that life could be this wonderful.
Happy New Year, and here's to another ten years of health, happiness, family, friends and love.
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