Forty brings about a lot of change in most people. It is a time where our minds begin to wander and wonder what might have been. We long for contact with old friends, and when it is made you never know what you will find.
It is also a time when we assess life and question the decisions we have made and begin to take action to change them. The discovery I made in this process is that there is a reason for everything.
After twenty years of not speaking, my first love contacted me. Curious, I flew off to another state to meet him, and it was incredible. Looking in those blue eyes, with the eyes of a sixteen year old who was still blushing in his presence was novel. Those eyes killed me when I met him at the age of 12, and years later, they still held that magical power.
At the age of 40, I had a ten year old child, was divorced and life consisted of work, child, work, child and did I mention work, child? The trip began an adventure, and a transformation.
Eventually other events in life sparked a move to his new hometown. Two years had passed since that first meeting and I now had a more sober view of life. Time passed and the honeymoon was always there, but the commitment never came. I had moved on and grown, and I finally realized that I was still dealing with the same man that ran off breaking my heart twenty years earlier.
I did learn though, that I am capable of many things, of loving adventure, of standing on my own two feet, of making decisions to change. I learned to feel my fear and face those things I had to face anyway.
At the age of 46, I have finally become comfortable with the prince being a frog but I have retained the crown jewels!
