Milestones

I'm really not staying on top of things too well here. Believe it or not this was my 500th post. I meant to do something for 500, ah well...pretzels will have to do. As near as I can figure I had my 50,00th visitor sometime during this post or that one. Since I was so late about checking my stats I can't even tell you who that person was. Heck, I wasn't even around for my second blogiversary, although it was incredibly cool to spend it meeting a fellow blogger for the first time.

Actually, it is pretty weird to think I've come up with 500 things to post about (Granted not all those ideas were good, but still it shocks me.) It's downright mindboggling to imagine folks have wanted to come see those 500 posts 50,000 times. So I really need to thank all of you who stop by here regularly to see what sort of silliness I slap up here. I started this thing as a way to stay in touch with some pals from Yahoo! Trivia rooms and to have a creative outlet that cost no money. Now I have over 100 people I read on a regular basis and average 80 people stopping by here on a given day. How'd that happen???

Well, in any event it makes me think of milestones in general. There are obvious ones in life like graduating, landing a first job, getting married, having children. There are surprising ones like finding your first gray hair, the first time you are addressed as "sir" or "ma'am" or the first time something breaks when you own your first home.

I remember as a teenager the first time my mother came to me for comfort and I was the one who had the confidence things would work out. She had worked in a horrid little garment factory for 9 years after Dad left. When my brother and I got to be teens she decided she could squeeze in a few night classes at the Vo-Tech school to gain some computer and office skills. She had walked out the factory for the last time and was working in an office as secretary. Finally, she had some degree of financial security and didn't have to wonder when the boss would decide to cut her rate and screw her out of hard earned pay or when the next lengthy lay-off would happen and leave her counting pennies. Unfortunately, she wound up being-downsized a year or so after landing that job. She came home devastated and in tears. Now you have to understand how rare a thing it was for my mom to ever cry in front of us. She is the queen of the brave front. She was always factual about our finances, there was no secret, but she never let us see her worry. This time she was nearly inconsolable and terrified she'd have no choice but to go back to the factory. I well understood what that meant. At the same time I just knew, and knew with certainty, she'd never set foot in that miserable place again. I told her so. We talked about practical steps she was going to take to make sure her worst fears were not realized. It was the first time I felt like I was talking with her more as an adult and less like her child.

Tell me about one of your milestones, one that was not so obvious but one that you still remember its impact.